£&t, '  ,V 

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Miss   Bellard's   Inspiration 


A  Novel 


By  W.  D.  Howells 

Author  of 

'  Letters   Home  "   "  Questionable  Shapes 

"  Literary  Friends  and  Acquaintance" 

"  Literature  and  Life  "  etc. 


New  York  and  London 

Harper  &  Brothers  Publishers 

1  905 


Copyright,  1905,  by  HARPER  &  BROTHERS. 

All  rights  reserved. 
Published  June,  1905. 


Miss   Bollard's   Inspiration 


154769 


Miss  Bollard's  Inspiration 


rY  dear,  will  you  please  read 
that  letter  again?"  Mrs.  Crom- 
bie  said,  in  tones  that  might 
either  be  those  of  entreaty  for 
her  husband's  compliance,  or  command  of  his 
obedience,  or  appeal  to  his  clearer  impres 
sion  from  the  confusion  which  her  niece's 
letter  had  cast  her  into.  She  began  in  a 
high,  imperative  note,  and  ended  in  some 
thing  like  an  imploring  whimper.  She  had 
first  read  the  letter  herself,  and  then  thrown 
it  across  the  breakfast  -  table  to  Crombie; 
and  as  he  began  to  read  it  to  himself  she 
now  added,  "Aloud!" 


Miss    Bellard's    Inspiration 

"I  don't  see  any  use  in  that,"  he  said. 
"There's  no  mystery  about  it." 

"No  mystery,  when  a  girl  like  Lillias 
Bellard  starts  up  out  of  space  and  asks  a 
thing  like  that?  We  might  as  well  sell  the 
place  at  once.  It  will  be  as  bad  as  The 
Surges  before  the  summer  is  over ;  and  I  did 
think  that  if  we  came  and  built  inland  we 
could  have  a  little  peace  of  our  lives." 
Crombie  trivially  thought  of  saying,  "  Little 
pieces  of  our  lives,"  but  he  did  not,  and  she 
went  on:  "If  it's  going  on  like  this,  the 
mountains  will  be  as  bad  as  the  seashore, 
and  there  will  be  nothing  left  but  Europe. 
Give  me  that  letter,  Archibald!" 

She  recovered  it  from  his  wanderingly  ex 
tended  left  hand,  his  right  being  employed 
in  filling  up  his  cup  with  the  exactly  pro 
portioned  due  of  hot  milk  which  he  poured 
so  as  to  make  a  bead  on  the  surface  of  the 
coffee. 

"I  can't  make  Lillias  out,"  Mrs.  Crombie 
2 


Miss    Bellard's    Inspiration 

flamed  forth  again.  "She  is  a  sly  girl;  or 
at  least  I  have  always  considered  her  so." 

"It  isn't  a  sly  letter,"  Crombie  suggested, 
impartially. 

"  No ;  and  that  is  just  it.  Anything  frank 
er,  or  bolder,  even,  I've  never  seen  in  my 
family."  Crombie  might  have  felt  the  em 
phasis  a  blow  at  his  own  family,  but  as  he 
had  none  except  the  wife  before  him,  he  did 
not  suffer  it  to  alienate  his  sympathy  from 
her.  "If  it  was  anybody  but  my  own 
sister's  child,  I  should  call  it  brazen.  It's  a 
liberty,  yes,  a  liberty,  even  if  I  am  her  aunt. 
She  had  no  right  to  presume  upon  our  re 
lationship.  If  the  Mellays  are  not  able  to 
receive  her  now,  she  might  go  somewhere 
else." 

"Where?" 

"Anywhere!" 

"I  don't  see  where.  Her  people  are 
abroad,  and  the  Mellays'  telegram  post 
poning  her  a  week,  seems  to  have  caught 
3 


Miss    Bollard's    Inspiration 

her  at  the  end  of  her  stipulated  stay  with 
the  Franklings;  and  she  can't  go  to  a  hotel 
alone." 

"I  don't  see  why  she  can't,  with  these 
advanced  ideas  of  hers." 

"  Because  the  hotel  men  are  not  as  ad 
vanced  in  their  ideas,  and  won't  receive  a 
pretty  young  girl  if  she  presents  herself  with 
no  escort  but  her  youth  and  beauty.  She 
might  as  well  be  a  Hebrew  or  an  Ethiopian." 

"Well,  it's  a  shame!  There  ought  to  be  a 
law  to  make  them." 

"  Oh,  I  dare  say  there  is  one  now,"  Crombie 
easily  assented.  "But  come,  Hester!  This 
isn't  going  to  kill  you.  A  niece  for  a  week 
is  no  such  mortal  matter.  One  voluntary, 
or  involuntary,  guest  doesn't  imply  a  succes 
sion  of  house-parties." 

"No,  but  it  is  the  disappointment!     My 

family,    at   least,    know   that   we   sold   The 

Surges  because  I  was  completely  worn  out 

with  people,  and  that  we  came  up  here  into 

4 


Miss    Bellard's    Inspiration 

this  by-gone  hollow  of  the  hills,  on  the  wrong 
side  of  the  Saco,  and  built  a  tumble-down  old 
farm-house  over  so  as  to  be  alone  in  it." 

"Then  you  oughtn't  to  have  built  the  old 
farm-house  over  so  nicely.  Lillias  will  go 
away,  and  tell  everybody  that  you've  got 
electric  lights,  and  hot  and  cold  water,  and  a 
furnace,  and  all  the  modern  conveniences, 
and  the  most  delightful  rambling  camp,  with 
ten  or  twenty  bedrooms,  and  open  fires  for 
cold  days  in  every  one.  She  will  say  that  it 
isn't  dull  here  a  bit ;  that  there's  a  hotel  full 
of  delightful  people  just  across  the  Saco, 
which  you  get  to  by  private  ferry,  and  hops 
every  night,  with  a  young  man  to  every  ten 
girls,  and  picnics  all  the  time,  and  lots  of 
easy  mountain-climbing. ' ' 

"Yes,  that  is  the  worst  of  it.  Very  well, 
I  shall  telegraph  her  not  to  come,  I  don't 
care  what  happens.  I  shall  say,  '  Very  sorry. 
Uncle  sick;  not  dangerously;  but  all  taken 
up  with  him.'  That's  just  ten  words." 
5 


Miss    Bollard's    Inspiration 

"Twelve;  and  not  one  true.  Besides, 
where  will  you  telegraph  her?  She's  started. 
She  left  Kansas  City  yesterday." 

"Nonsense!" 

"All  the  same,  that's  what's  happened." 

"Very  well,  then,  I  know  what  I  shall  do. 
I  shall  engage  a  room  for  her  at  The  Saco 
Shore,  if  it's  full  of  such  delightful  people — 

"Hold  on,  my  dear!  That  was  merely 
my  forecast  of  her  language." 

"No  matter!  And  you  can  meet  her  at 
the  station  and  tell  her  what  I've  done,  and 
take  her  there.  I  am  not  going  to  be 
scooped  up,  even  if  she  25  my  niece.  And 
so  Lillias  Bellard  will  find  out." 

Mrs.  Crombie  gathered  the  offending  let 
ter  and  its  envelope  violently  together,  and 
started  from  the  table  as  if  to  go  at  once  and 
carry  out  her  declared  purpose.  But  she 
reallv  went  up-stairs  to  decide  which  of  the 
bedrooms  she  should  give  the  girl.  She 
began  with  the  worst  and  ended  with  the 
6 


Miss    Bollard's    Inspiration 

best,  which  looked  eastward  in  that  par 
ticular  crook  of  the  river  towards  the  Presi 
dential  range,  and,  if  you  poked  your  head 
out,  commanded  a  glimpse  of  the  almost  eter 
nal  snows  of  Mount  Washington  where  a  drift 
of  the  belated  winter  was  glimmering,  now 
at  the  end  of  July,  in  a  fold  of  the  pachy- 
dermal  slope.  She  had  always  to  play  some 
such  comedy  with  herself  before  she  could 
reconcile  herself  to  the  inevitable;  and  her 
husband  was  content  to  have  her  do  so,  as 
long  as  her  drama  did  not  involve  his  com 
plexity  with  the  inevitable.  But  the  wildest 
stroke  of  her  imagination  could  not  inculpate 
him  in  the  present  affair;  and  though  she 
felt  it  somewhat  guilty  of  him  to  attempt  any 
palliation  of  Lillias  Bellard's  behavior,  she 
also  felt  it  kind,  and  was  very  good  to  him 
the  whole  day  on  account  of  it;  so  that  he 
was  able  honestly  to  pity  her  for  the  base  of 
real  tragedy  he  knew  in  her  comedy.  They 
had  not  only  sold  The  Surges,  where  they 


Miss    Bellard's    Inspiration 

had  spent  twenty  summers,  because  of  the 
heavy  drain  of  hospitality  upon  her  energies 
there,  but  because  they  had  been  offered  a 
very  good  price  for  it,  and  they  believed  that 
the  air  of  the  mountains  would  be  better  for 
their  rheumatisms.  It  formed  at  any  rate  a 
more  decided  change  from  the  air  of  Boston ; 
and  the  sale  of  The  Surges  was  not  altogether 
that  sacrifice  to  solitude  which  her  passion 
ate  resentment  of  the  first  menace  of  it  had 
made  it  seem  to  her.  Still  there  were  associa 
tions  with  the  things  brought  from  the  sea 
side  cottage  which  supported  her  in  the 
change,  and  which  now  burdened  her  with 
unavailing  suggestions  of  how  easy  it  would 
have  been  to  make  Lillias  have  a  nice  time 
in  the  more  familiar  environment.  She  sigh 
ed  to  herself  in  owning  that  she  did  not 
know  what  she  should  do  with  the  girl  where 
they  were ;  for  already,  as  she  went  through 
the  house,  she  forgot  her  own  hardship  in 
realizing  how  difficult,  with  only  the  Saco 
8 


Miss    Bellard's    Inspiration 

Shore  House  to  draw  upon,  it  would  be  to 
amuse  the  child. 

It  was  an  essential  part  of  her  comedy  to 
keep  this  transmutation  of  moods  from 
Crombie;  her  self-respect  required  it,  and 
experience  had  taught  her  that  the  most  gen 
erous  of  men  would  take  a  mean  advantage 
if  he  could,  and  would  turn  from  pitying  to 
mocking  her  for  the  change.  There  was  no 
outward  change  from  the  effect  of  plaintive 
submission  into  which  she  had  sunk  by  their 
one-o'clock  dinner-time,  when,  in  the  later 
afternoon  she  asked  him  to  take  her  adrive : 
the  last,  she  predicted,  they  should  have 
alone  together  that  summer.  Some  part  of 
the  way  she  dedicated  to  a  decent  pathos  in 
the  presence  of  scenery  endeared  by  their 
unmolested  meanderings,  and  the  thought 
of  the  sweet  intimacy  in  which  they  had  all 
but  got  back  their  young  married  selves. 
But  the  time  and  the  place  came  when  she 
could  stand  it  no  longer,  and  he  was  hardly 
9 


Miss   Bollard's   Inspiration 

surprised  to  have  her  break  out  with  the  un 
related  conjecture,  "  I  wonder  what  she  has 
got  up  her  sleeve." 

"A  young  man,  probably,"  he  suggested. 

"  Don't  be  coarse !  What  makes  you  think 
that?" 

14 1  don't  know  that  I  think  that,  or  any 
thing.  What's  the  use  of  worrying  about 
it?  She'll  be  here  so  soon." 

"Well,  I  really  believe  she  has.  And  I 
shall  watch  her,  I  can  tell  you.  If  Aggie 
Bellard"— Mrs  Crombie  branched  away  in 
the  direction  of  the  girl's  mother — "  thinks 
she  can  go  off  to  Europe  for  the  summer,  and 
leave  Lillias  scattered  broadcast  over  the 
continent,  with  no  one  to  look  after  her,  she 
is  very  much  mistaken."  This  was  the  ex 
pression  of  such  very  complex  feeling  that 
Crombie  could  reply  with  nothing  so  well  as 
a  spluttering  laugh.  His  wife  knew  perfectly 
what  his  laugh  meant,  and  she  went  on:  "I 
never  approved  of  her  second  marriage,  any- 
10 


Miss  Bollard's   Inspiration 

way,  and  I  am  not  going  to  have  Lillias  shoul 
dered  off  on  me  to  make  room  for  a  second 
family  in  her  mother's  house.  Archibald!" 
she  cried,  and  she  had  to  use  him  very  sternly 
in  the  tone  she  was  really  taking  with  her 
sister  and  niece,  "do  you  suppose  it's  a  plot 
between  them  to  get  Lillias  here  with  us,  so 
that  she  can  ingratiate  herself  with  me,  and 
just  keep  staying  on  indefinitely?  Because 
if  you  do,"  she  continued  to  threaten  him, 
while  she  cast  about  in  her  mind  for  a 
penalty  severe  enough  to  fit  the  offence,  "  I 
won't  have  it!" 

This  was  so  ineffective  that  he  had  to 
laugh  again,  but  he  reconciled  her  to  his  de 
rision  by  the  real  compassion  with  which  he 
said,  "You  know  you  don't  suppose  any 
thing  of  the  kind  yourself.  It's  a  perfectly 
simple  case,  and  the  only  reasonable  con 
jecture  is  that  Lillias  has  told  you  the  exact 
truth  in  her  letter.  She  is  coming  here  be 
cause  she  has  nowhere  else  to  put  in  the  time 
ii 


Miss  Bellard's   Inspiration 

till  the  Mellays  are  ready  for  her,  and  in  a 
week  she  will  be  gone.  I  don't  think  that 
will  make  any  serious  break  in  the  quiet  of 
our  summer.  At  any  rate,  you  can't  help 
yourself." 

"No,  I  can't,"  Mrs.  Crombie  recognized. 
"  But  if  she  imagines  that  she  is  going  to 
hoodwink  me!" 

She  did  not  attempt  to  say  what  she  would 
do  in  such  an  event,  and  her  husband  felt  no 
anxiety  as  to  the  sort  of  time  Lillias  would 
have  under  his  roof. 


II 

fHE  maid  met  them  on  their  re 
turn  with  word  that  a  gentle 
man  had  called  while  they  were 
away.  On  rigid  question  from 
Mrs.  Crombie  she  confessed  that  he  seemed 
rather  short  and  fair,  but  this  proved  to  be 
partially  an  effect  from  Mrs.  Crombie' s  dis 
pleasure  with  his  being  first  long  and  dark. 
The  girl  was  quite  sure  that  he  had  a  mus 
tache,  though  she  afterwards  corrected  her 
self  so  far  as  to  say  that  his  hair  was  cut  close. 
He  had  asked  for  no  one  but  Mr.  Crombie, 
who  evinced  so  little  interest  in  his  visitor 
that  after  a  casual  glance  at  his  card  he  left  it 
to  the  scrutiny  by  which  his  wife  sought  to 
divine  him  from  it.  From  evidences  not  ap 
parent  to  Crombie,  she  had  decided  that  it 


Miss  Bellard's    Inspiration 

was  an  English  card,  and  that  Mr.  Edmund 
Craybourne  was  English  himself,  because  he 
had  no  middle  name,  not  even  a  middle 
initial. 

"Did  he  leave  any  message?"  She  now 
turned  upon  the  maid  again. 

"No,  ma'am." 

"Did  he  say  he  would  come  back?" 

"He  didn't  say,  m'm." 

"  Did  he  tell  you  whether  he  was  stopping 
at  the  Saco  Shore  House?" 

"  He  didn't  tell  anything,  m'm." 

With  these  facts  in  hand,  Mrs.  Crombie 
followed  her  husband  to  his  room,  where  he 
was  washing  the  odor  of  his  driving-gloves 
from  his  hands,  and  asked  him  what  he  had 
to  say  now  about  Lillias  Bellard. 

"Well,  when  I  said  there  was  a  young 
man  in  question,  you  told  me  not  to  be  in 
decent." 

"Coarse/  I  said;  and  it  was  coarse.     Do 
you  suppose  this  is  the  young  man?" 
14 


Miss  Bellard's   Inspiration 

"Not  if  there  is  none." 

"  Well,  I  know  it  is.  Now  what  are  you 
going  to  do?  He  didn't  say  where  he  was 
staying,  and  you  will  have  to  wait  till  he 
comes  back.  But  what  will  you  do,  then?" 

"  I  will  settle  that  when  I  see  him,"  Crom- 
bie  said,  applying  himself  vigorously  to  the 
towel.  "If  he  is  short  and  fair  and  fat,  I 
may  fall  upon  him  and  rend  him ;  but  if  he 
is  long  and  lank  and  dark,  I  may  consider 
about  it ;  though  I  don't  know  why  I  should 
do  anything  at  all,  come  to  think  of  it." 

"No,"  Mrs.  Crombie  allowed,  "/  don't 
know  why  you  should.  In  fact,  I  should 
prefer  to  see  him  myself.  I  could  get  it  out 
of  him  better." 

She  did  not  say  what  it  was,  and  the  whole 
situation  was  simplified,  as  to  action,  by  the 
young  man's  not  coming  back,  though  it  was 
intensified  as  a  mystery  by  his  failure  to  reap 
pear.  In  this  aspect  it  supplied  Mrs.  Crom 
bie  with  conversation  quite  to  the  end  of 
15 


Miss  Bellard's   Inspiration 

supper,  when  the  barge  of  the  Saco  Shore 
House  drove  up,  and  left  Lillias  Bellard  and 
her  baggage  at  the  cottage  door.  Her  aunt 
welcomed  her  with  a  warmth  which  she  could 
not  have  imagined  of  herself,  and  affection 
ately  ignored  the  girl's  excuses  for  coming  so 
much  sooner  than  she  had  said,  and  so  much 
later ;  for  the  train  that  brought  her  twenty- 
four  hours  ahead  of  time  was  a  whole  hour 
behind.  For  that  reason  she  sat  down  to 
her  retarded  supper  nearly  a  day  before  she 
should  have  had  any  supper  at  all.  Her  jus 
tification  was  that  she  had  found  people  she 
knew  coming  on,  and  she  had  thought  it  best 
to  come  with  them,  hoping  it  would  not 
make  too  much  difference  to  her  aunt  Hester. 
She  was  a  pretty  girl  of  what  Crombie  in 
his  quality  of  incomplete  artist  decided  was 
a  silvery  type,  singularly  paintable  in  the 
relation  of  her  gray-green  eyes  to  the  argent 
tones  of  her  travelling-costume,  her  hat  and 
ribbons  and  her  gloves.  You  must  take  her, 
16 


Miss   Bellard's   Inspiration 

of  course,  with  the  same  intention  and  in 
telligence  that  she  had  taken  herself  with, 
or  as  much  of  it  as  you  could  get;  for  it  was 
clear  that  she  was  dressed  in  the  frankest 
sympathy  with  her  own  coloring,  and  in  con 
scious  rejection  of  all  mistaken  notions  of 
contrast.  If  some  girls  made  you  think  of 
May  and  others  of  July  or  August,  the  month 
that  she  made  you  think  of  was  September: 
not  the  moods  in  which  it  mirrored  the 
coming  October,  but  those  in  which  it  sug 
gested  the  youngest  months  of  summer,  or 
even  spring.  She  was  fairly  mature,  as  he 
knew  from  his  acquaintance  with  her  history ; 
she  would  not  see  twenty-seven  again;  but 
she  gave  you  the  same  sort  of  contradictory 
impressions  of  youth  and  age  that  she  gave 
you  of  knowingness  and  innocence,  of  self- 
reliance  and  helplessness,  of  ignorance  and 
experience,  and  of  energy  that  ended  in  in 
decision. 

Crombie  revolved  these  things  in  his  mind, 


Miss  Bellard's   Inspiration 

while  he  looked  at  her  where  she  sat  at  table, 
talking  with  her  aunt  in  a  serenity  like  that 
of  a  September  afternoon:  her  silvery  veil 
misting  her  gray  hat  above  her  hair,  sprin 
kled  even  at  her  age  with  gray,  and  her  gray 
gloves  lying  beside  her  plate,  physically  but 
not  spiritually  detached  from  her  gray  cos 
tume.  Her  intelligent  eyes,  glancing  from 
her  aunt  to  him  and  back  again  to  her,  had 
lovely  skyey  lights  in  them,  of  the  sort  that 
haunt  the  horizons  of  the  passing  summer, 
when  the  deep  turquoise  of  the  upper  heav 
ens  changes  into  the  delicate  emerald  that 
seems  a  reflection  of  the  green  earth  below. 
It  struck  him  that  if  it  were  really  a  question 
of  his  wife's  knowing  what  her  niece  had  up 
her  sleeve,  she  would  know  no  more  than  her 
niece  chose  to  show ;  and  if  there  were  possi 
bilities  of  her  being  quite  willing  to  bare  both 
her  pretty  arms  to  the  elbows  it  might  be 
in  the  confident  skill  with  which  the  presti 
digitator  chooses  to  convince  the  witness 
18 


Miss   Bellard's   Inspiration 

that  there  is  really  nothing  of  preparation 
for  the  feat  he  is  about  to  perform,  in  order 
to  heighten  the  effect  of  it. 

A  sense  of  her  contradictions  persisted 
when  she  rose  from  the  table  and  stood  not 
so  high  as  he  had  expected,  and  again  when 
she  followed  her  aunt  up-stairs  with  a  decep 
tive  show  of  height  from  the  skirt  that  trailed 
behind  her.  He  was  shut  from  the  revela 
tion  of  the  slight  and  rather  small  figure 
which  Lillias  made  to  Mrs.  Crombie,  in  her 
room,  when  she  had  reduced  herself  to  the 
fact  by  putting  off  her  jacket  and  hat,  and 
stood  waiting  in  her  shirt-waist  for  her  aunt 
to  finish  explaining  why  she  gave  her  that 
room  and  not  another.  Mrs.  Crombie  ended 
by  saying  that  she  supposed  Lillias  must  be 
very  tired,  and  would  want  to  be  going  to 
bed;  but  Lillias  answered,  not  at  all,  and 
would  not  her  aunt  sit  down?  She  said  that 
one  got  so  used  to  distances  in  the  West  that 
trains  rather  rested  one  than  not.  Besides, 


Miss  Bellard's  Inspiration 

she  had  enjoyed  a  season  of  such  entire  vege 
tation,  since  Commencement,  out  on  the 
Pacific  coast,  that  a  little  fatigue  would  be 
an  agreeable  variety  which  she  would  be 
glad  to  be  aware  of.  At  the  same  time  she 
hid  a  yawn  with  such  skill  that  it  made  her 
aunt  respect  her,  and  resolve  to  spare  her  as 
soon  as  she  got  what  she  wished  out  of  her. 

She  sat  down  provisionally  and  asked 
Lillias  whether  she  was  going  back  there  in 
the  fall,  and  when  the  girl  said  she  did  not 
know  but  she  was,  Mrs.  Crombie  said  it 
must  be  very  queer,  co-education.  "Aren't 
they  apt  to  get  married?"  she  asked,  with 
a  frown  of  polite  disgust. 

"Well,  yes,  they  are,"  Lillias  admitted. 
"  But  that  isn't  considered  such  a  very  bad 
thing,  out  there.  You  might  say  that  there 
was  a  good  deal  of  courting,  but  there  is  very 
little  flirting;  and  there  is  nothing  that  is  so 
instantly  sat  upon  by  the  girls  themselves  as 
the  least  fastness.  But  I  don't  come  in  on 
20 


Miss   Bollard's   Inspiration 

the  question  anywhere.  I'm  'one  of  the 
faculty,'  but  my  professorship,  if  it's  that,  is 
teaching  the  advanced  pupils  of  the  upper- 
grade  schools  that  form  part  of  the  university. 
My  undergraduate  classes  average  about 
fourteen  for  girls,  and  fifteen  or  sixteen  for 
boys,  and  there  hasn't  been  a  marriage 
among  them  for  the  whole  year  past.  My 
postgraduate  lecture  audiences  are  mostly 
made  up  of  townspeople  who  are  married 
already." 

She  smiled  very  amusingly  upon  her  aunt 
at  the  end  of  a  speech  which  she  made  with 
pretty  turns  of  her  head  and  a  final  droop  of 
her  shoulders  and  a  forward  thrust  of  her 
chin  above  her  hands  fallen  into  each  other 
in  her  lap.  It  was  very  young-lady ish,  and 
as  little  academical  as  could  be,  so  that  her 
aunt,  who  had  feared  among  other  things 
that  the  child  was  going  to  be  priggish,  was 
entirely  consoled.  Lillias  was  in  the  depart 
ment  of  oratory,  and  she  might  have  been 
21 


Miss  Bellard's   Inspiration 

expected  to  have  a  public  manner,  or  an  elo 
cutionary  manner,  but  anything  more  private 
or  colloquial  than  her  manner  Mrs.  Crombie 
had  not  seen.  It  was  with  the  determination 
not  to  be  overcome  by  the  peculiar  charm 
which  she  felt  in  her,  and  yet  not  to  use  un 
necessary  violence  in  avoiding  the  dust 
which  Lillias  might  attempt  to  throw  into 
her  eyes,  that  Mrs.  Crombie  now  no  longer 
delayed  coming  down  to  business. 

"Lillias,"  she  said,  with  a  skirmishing 
laugh,  and  trying  not  to  say  it  with  any 
change  of  note,  "  we  have  had  a  very  strange 
call  this  afternoon.  Some  gentleman  whom 
we  don't  at  all  know  asked  for  Mr.  Crombie, 
while  we  were  driving,  and  left  his  card.  We 
thought  perhaps  he  was  an  acquaintance  of 
yours,  or  it  may  be  some  mistake  of  his; 
though  the  maid  was  very  sure  that  he  asked 
for  Mr.  Crombie  by  name." 

Mrs.  Crombie  gave  Lillias  Mr.  Cray  bourne's 
card,  and  that  girl  looked  at  it  with  a  care- 

22 


Miss  Bellard's   Inspiration 

lessness  which  only  partially  faded  from  her 
manner  as  she  read.  She  said,  "Really!" 
and  she  might  apparently  have  contented 
herself  with  that  brief  comment  if  her  aunt 
had  not  prompted  her. 

"You  know  him?" 

"Yes,"  Lillias  said,  promptly  enough. 

Mrs.  Crombie,  as  lightly  and  brightly  as 
she  could,  suggested,  "And  you  expected 
him?" 

Lillias  laughed  after  a  little  absence  and 
silence,  "Well,  not  quite  so  soon,  Aunt  Hes 
ter.  I  didn't  expect  him  for  a  day  or  two  yet. 
I  won't  let  him  bother  you." 

"Oh,"  Mrs.  Crombie  said,  with  a  flight  of 
generous  insincerity,  "any  friend  of  yours!" 
and  she  prepared,  with  an  effect  of  going 
away,  which  did  not  even  lift  her  out  of  her 
chair,  to  make  her  next  approach  still  more 
delicately.  "We  thought,  somehow,  that  he 
was  an  Englishman." 

The  candor  of  Lillias  in  replying  could  not 
3  23 


Miss  Bellard's   Inspiration 

have  been  greater  if  she  was  actually  trying 
to  conceal  something.  "Well,  he  is,  Aunt 
Hester.  He's  one  of  those  younger  sons 
who  rather  abound  out  there." 

"Oh,  indeed!  And  the  eldest  son—"  It 
was  a  little  too  leading,  even  with  the  abrupt 
stop  that  Mrs.  Crombie  made. 

"Isn't  a 'title,  in  this  case.  But  there's 
property,  and  Mr.  Craybourne's  brother  got 
it  all,  I  guess,  except  the  money  that  Mr. 
Craybourne  has  spent  in  amateur  ranching. 
He's  very  nice,  I  may  as  well  tell  you  at 
once,  Aunt  Hester.  He's  cultivated  and 
well  -  read  and  well  -  mannered.  Our  men 
have  no  manners,  though  some  of  them  will 
have  when  my  boys  grow  up  through  the 
department  of  applied  conduct,  which  is 
really  my  job,  though  I  pretend  to  teach  the 
niceties  of  speech  and  pronunciation  only. 
Yes,  I  like  Mr.  Craybourne  very,  very  much," 
Lillias  concluded,  and  she  remained  looking 
at  the  card  in  her  left  palm,  as  if  it  were  the 
24 


Miss  Bellard's    Inspiration 

sort  of  photograph  that  used  to  be  called  a 
carte-de-visite . 

Mrs.  Crombie  made  several  attempts  to 
speak,  which  ended,  as  they  began,  in  gasps, 
and  left  Lillias  to  go  on,  as  she  did,  thought 
fully. 

"  He  is  very  nice,  and  very  bidable,  though 
what  he  might  be  afterwards!— 

Now,  indeed,  Mrs.  Crombie  broke  from  her 
inarticulate  struggles.  "Why,  Lillias  Bel- 
lard,  are  you  engaged  to  Mr.  Craybourne?" 

1  'Well,  no.     But  we're  seeing." 


Ill 

'ROMBIE,  when  his  wife  had  re 
joined  him,  sat  dripping,  as  it 
were,  from  the  deluge  of  con 
jectures,  facts,  and  reflections 
which  she  had  hastened  to  pour  out  on  him 
after  coming  away  from  Lillias. 

"Anything  more  outspoken,  more  bold 
faced,  more  unblushing!  If  those  are  the 
manners  that  she  is  teaching  the  youth  out 
there  under  the  guise  of  elocution!" 

"There  does  seem  to  be  a  sort  of  brazen 
ingenuousness  in  it,"  Crombie  allowed.  "  But 
you  can't  say  there's  anything  deceitful. 
And  that's  what  you  dreaded." 

"  I  don't  know  whether  I  dreaded  it.    But 
I  did  hope  that  if  Lillias  had  anything  to  con 
ceal  she  would  manage  it  with  a  little  finesse, 
26 


Miss   Bellard's   Inspiration 

a  little  delicacy.  I  hoped  that  if  she  was 
going  to  bring  the  burden  of  a  love-affair 
into  the  house  with  her,  she  would  have  the 
grace  to  carry  it  off  so  that  it  shouldn't 
seem  to  be  a  burden.  But  the  brutal 
frankness  with  which  she  dumps  it  all  on 
me!" 

"  I  don't  call  it  brutal,"  Crombie  said,  with 
an  air  of  reasoning,  "though  it  is  certainly 
frank.  I  think  it  has  its  charm.  It's  de- 
liciously  honest,  and  it  ought  to  be  a  relief 
to  you,  after  the  duplicity  you've  been  dread 
ing — the  finesse,  as  you  call  it." 

"I  call  it  duplicity,  pretending  to  come 
here  for  a  week,  so  as  to  bridge  over  between 
visits,  and  meaning  all  the  time  to  make  us 
a  base  of  operations,  with  him  at  the  Saco 
Shore  House,  so  that  they  can  see  each  other 
constantly  under  my  very  wing.  If  that  isn't 
finesse,  I  don't  know  what  it  is!" 

"  Then,  I  don't  see  what  you  have  to  com 
plain  of,  with  frankness  and  finesse  both  on 
27 


Miss  Bellard's   Inspiration 

hand  in  one  and  the  same  Mephistophelian 
innocent." 

"Oh,  Archie!"  Mrs.  Crombie  whimpered. 
" It's  the  care!  It's  the  terrible  disappoint 
ment  of  a  broken-up  summer!  It's  having 
the  disturbance  of  it  going  on  under  our  roof 
day  after  day,  when  I  was  looking  forward  to 
such  a  complete  rest  with  you,  dear!  It's 
enough  to  make  me  wish  we  were  back  at 
The  Surges.  You  had  better  sell  this  place 
at  once." 

"There'll  be  time  enough  to  think  about 
that  and  to  change  our  minds  twice  or 
thrice.  Mountain  property  hasn't  the  in 
stant  convertibility  of  shore  property.  I 
should  find  some  difficulty  in  giving  this 
place  away  if  I  was  in  a  hurry  to  get  rid  of  it. 
Fortunately  I'm  not.  Did  she  tell  you  how 
they  happened  to  meet?" 

"Oh,  romantically  enough,  I  believe. 
After  his  last  failure  in  ranching  he  was 
quite  at  leisure,  and  he  came  into  town  to  pass 
28 


Miss  Bellard's   Inspiration 

the  time  at  the  hotel,  and  think.  There  he 
heard  of  Lillias's  lectures,  or  talks,  which 
were  open  to  the  public — really,  I  can't  im 
agine  it,  but  her  lectures  seem  to  be  quite  a 
fad,  out  there — and  he  went  to  one  of  them, 
and  then  he  went  to  all  that  were  left  of  them. 
At  last  he  got  himself  introduced;  though 
why  he  didn't  at  first  she  couldn't  under 
stand,  unless  it  was  his  English  shyness. 
After  he  did  it  seems  to  have  been  plain  sail 
ing,  as  far  as  they've  gone." 

"And  how  far  have  they  gone?" 

"  Well,  she  doesn't  seem  to  know,  exactly. 
The  case  appears  to  be  that  she  has  some 
doubts  of  marriage  itself." 

"Oh,  come,  now!  A  pretty  girl  like 
that?" 

"  I  don't  see  what  her  prettiness  has  to  do 
with  it.  A  great  many  girls  are  that  way, 
now.  They  look  at  it  very  cool-headedly. 
They  don't  like  to  give  up  their  liberty  unless 
they're  certain  of  their  happiness,  and  they 
29 


Miss   Bellard's   Inspiration 

see,  if  they  look  round  them  at  all,  that 
there's  a  great  deal  of  unhappiness  in  mar 
riage." 

1  'They  could  always  get  divorced." 

"Yes,  but  they  don't  like  that — nice  girls 
don't.  They'd  rather  not  go  in  for  it,  to 
begin  with.  It  seems  that  Lillias  has  a 
great  idea  of  being  honest  with  herself. 
Really,  to  hear  her  talk —  I  wish  you  could 
have  been  at  the  key-hole!" 

"  I  wish  I  could — if  I  may  be  as  honest  as 
Lillias." 

"It  seems  that  it  wasn't  the  hard  work, 
or  the  beginning  at  the  bottom,  or  the  per 
sonal  exhibition,  as  Mrs.  Kemble  calls  it, 
which  kept  her  from  going  on  the  stage. 
There  was  a  manager  quite  ready  to  take  her 
from  the  dramatic  school  and  feature  her,  as 
she  said,  in  a  new  play— 

"Don't  go  too  far  back!" 

"I'm  not,  but  you  can't  understand  if  I 
don't. — It  was  the  perpetual  pretence;  what 
30 


Miss  Bellard's   Inspiration 

she  felt  was  the  essential  and  final  falsity  of 
a  life  that  consisted  in  the  representation  of 
emotions  that  were  not  really  felt.  In  short, 
the  insincerity." 

"Well?" 

"  Well— where  was  I?  Oh  yes!  She  felt 
that  if  she  had  no  doubt  about  marrying 
Mr.  Craybourne  she  would  have  no  misgiv 
ings  about  marriage;  or  if  she  had  perfect 
faith  in  marriage  she  could  confidently  trust 
herself  in  marrying  him.  But  as  she  has 
neither,  she  can't." 

Crombie  rubbed  his  forehead,  as  if  to  clear 
away  a  cloud  within.  "  I  don't  believe  I've 
followed  you,"  he  said. 

"  Why,  he's  offered  himself,  but  she  hasn't 
thought  it  out  yet." 

"And  she's  got  him  here  to  help  her 
think?" 

"That  is  where  the  sinuosity  comes  in; 
that  is  where  Lillias  shows  herself  a  true 
girl." 


Miss   Bellard's   Inspiration 

Crombie  laughed.  "And  what  does  she 
expect  us  to  do?" 

"  Do  you  know  what  she  said  to  me?  Not 
just  in  so  many  words,  but  that  was  the 
sum  and  substance  of  it.  She  made  a  long, 
sly  preamble  about  having  always  thought 
us  the  happiest  married  couple  she  had  ever 
seen,  the  most  united  and  harmonious;  and 
she  wanted  Mr.  Craybourne  to  know  us, 
too." 

"  As  a  sort  of  object-lesson?  I'm  not  sure 
that  I  should  like  to  be  studied.  It  would 
make  me  conscious." 

"Of.  course,"  Mrs.  Crombie  said,  with  a 
seriousness  which  amazed  him,  "it's  very 
flattering." 

"It's  taffy  of  the  most  barefaced  descrip 
tion.  Now,  my  dear,  you  look  out  for  that 
girl.  Don't  trust  her  beyond  your  sight. 
Does  she  expect  us  to  take  any  active  part 
in  regard  to  this  Englishman  of  hers?" 

"Oh  no.     And   I   quite    agree  with    you 
32 


Miss  Bellard's   Inspiration 

about  her  slyness.  There  can't  be  so  much 
smoke  without  some  fire,  and  I  shall  cer 
tainly  watch  her.  She  wants  to  commit  us 
to  some  scheme  in  her  mother's  absence,  and 
I  am  not  going  to  be  used.  She  will  find 
that  out." 

The  talk  of  the  Crombies  ended  for  the 
night  in  a  very  exhaustive  analysis  of  the 
relations  of  Lillias  to  her  more  immediate 
family,  then  as  remote  in  space  as  close  in 
blood,  and  in  a  just  recognition  of  how  very 
little  the  girl,  left  to  shift  for  herself,  owed 
her  mother  in  obedience  or  deference.  Mrs. 
Crombie  led  the  conclusion  in  censure  of  her 
sister,  with  those  reserves  in  behalf  of  her 
peculiarities  which  a  woman  sometimes  likes 
to  make  in  judging  her  next  of  kin,  as  if  their 
eccentricities  somehow  reflected  picturesque- 
ness  if  not  praise  upon  herself.  Lillias,  she 
said,  had  come  honestly  by  anything  that 
was  original  in  her;  and  she  did  not  know 
but  that  if  the  girl  was  now  hesitating  in  a 
33 


Miss  Bollard's   Inspiration 

way  that  was  ridiculous  about  accepting 
Mr.  Craybourne,  she  was  certainly  improv 
ing  upon  her  mother,  who  used  to  be  always 
hesitating  about  people  after  she  had  ac 
cepted  them,  and  sometimes  after  she  had 
married  them.  In  the  case  of  Lillias's 
father,  she  reminded  Crombie,  Aggie's  mis 
giving  had  gone  so  far  as  to  have  the  char 
acter  of  a  provisional  separation  for  a  whole 
year  before  his  death.  She  asked  Crombie 
if  he  did  not  think  that  this  showed  a  real 
honesty  in  the  child ;  and  he  said  that  he  did. 
By  this  time  he  was  so  sleepy  that  he  would 
have  said  anything. 

He  was  quite  as  compliant  when  he  woke, 
but  he  found  his  wife  of  another  mind,  after 
a  night  passed  beyond  the  influence  of  her 
niece.  She  came  into  his  room  before  he 
was  up,  or  fairly  awake,  fully  dressed  and 
with  a  defensive  armor  invisibly  on,  which 
she  betrayed  in  saying,  "  Well,  she  is  a  case." 

"Why,  what  has  she  been  doing  now?" 
34 


Miss   Bollard's   Inspiration 

Crombie   asked,    instantly   roused   to   con 
sciousness. 

11  Oh,  nothing.  I  have  just  been  thinking 
her  over,  and  I  have  gone  back  to  my  first 
impressions.  I  think  what  she  has  done  is 
enough  without  anything  more.  The  ques 
tion  is,  what  ought  we  to  do?  Shall  we 
quietly  ignore  Mr.  Craybourne  until  she 
chooses  to  make  a  move,  or  shall  we  ignore 
her,  and  you  go  over  to  the  Saco  Shore  and 
call  upon  him,  and  take  the  bull  by  the 
horns?  Do  you  know,  my  dear,  I  believe 
that's  just  what  she  wants  you  to  do.  How 
can  we  tell  but  it's  a  plot  between  them  to 
force  our  hands?  There's  every  probability, 
to  my  mind,  that  she  planned  for  him  to  get 
here  before  her,  so  that  he  would  come  and 
be  looked  over  before  she  arrived,  and  we  be 
driven  at  the  point  of  the  bayonet  to  say 
what  we  think  of  him.  I'll  bet  anything 
you  dare  that  she  was  enraged  beyond  de 
scription  when  she  found  that  she  had 
35 


Miss  Bellard's   Inspiration 

missed  fire,  and  that  we  hadn't  seen  him, 
after  all!" 

"  I  don't  think  it's  fair,"  Crombie  said,  "  to 
use  such  various  and  vigorous  imagery  with 
a  man  that's  still  on  his  back." 

"Well,  you  must  get  up,  then."  She  had 
been  going  about,  pulling  up  window-shades 
and  throwing  open  shutters,  as  she  talked, 
and  she  now  confronted  him  in  the  full  light  of 
day.  "It's  nearly  breakfast-time,  anyway; 
and  I  want  to  talk  it  thoroughly  over  with 
you  after  you're  shaved." 

" I  shall  be  clearer,  then;  but  I  shall  be  a 
great  deal  hungrier,  and  I  don't  believe  I  can 
talk  it  over  till  I've  had  my  coffee." 

"  You've  got  to,"  she  said,  going  out  of  the 
room. 

But  before  he  had  half  finished  shaving, 
and  while  he  was  still  grieving  inwardly  at 
having  to  help  his  wife  make  up  her  mind 
about  her  niece  all  over  again,  he  heard  her 
voice  gayly  lifted  and  the  clash  of  enthu- 

36 


Miss  Bellard's   Inspiration 

siastic  kisses  in  a  pause  of  the  rustling 
skirts  that  he  knew  to  be  meeting  in  the  upper 
hallway  on  which  all  the  bedroom  doors 
opened.  He  noticed  that  his  wife's  and  her 
niece's  voices  were  very  much  alike  in  the 
one  asking,  "Why,  child,  you  poor  thing, 
are  you  up  already?  Why  didn't  you  let 
me  send  your  breakfast  to  your  room?"  and 
the  other  answering,  "Oh,  I'm  always  up  to 
breakfast,  aunt,  and  I'm  so  be-you-tifully 
rested,  I  couldn't  think  of  it." 

"  Well,  then,  come  right  down.  It  '11  be  on 
the  table  instantly,"  he  heard  his  wife  con 
tinue.  "  Your  uncle  will  come  any  old  time, 
as  he  says,  and  we  needn't  wait  for  him." 

"Well,  I  am  rather  nippish,"  he  heard 
Lillias  owning  in  the  same  note. 

The  girl  was  very  amusing,  he  thought, 
when  he  found  them  at  breakfast,  and  Mrs. 
Crombie  said  she  had  been  telling  about  her 
university  life,  out  there,  and  bade  her 
go  on. 

37 


Miss  Bellard's   Inspiration 

"  Oh,  I  don't  believe  Uncle  Archibald  will 
care  for  it,"  Lillias  said,  but  she  corrected  her 
self  so  far  as  to  add,  "It  is  rather  funny,  I 
suppose,  to  you,  off  here."  He  liked  her 
standing  up  so  for  her  adoptive  West,  and  he 
showed  an  immediate  interest  which  in 
spired  her.  She  was  looking  still  prettier 
than  the  night  before,  and  the  flower-like 
freshness  of  her  morning-dress  was  quite  as 
becoming  as  the  twilight  tones  which  had 
clothed  her  as  with  a  pensive  music  the  night 
before.  He  tried  to  put  out  of  his  mind  a 
saying  to  the  effect  that  in  the  dark  all  cats 
are  gray,  while  he  found  a  singular  pleasure 
in  the  pseudo-deference  with  which  she  ad 
dressed  herself  to  him.  "You  see,"  she  con 
tinued,  "  that  my  lectures  are  rather  outside 
of  the  regular  courses,  and  that  was  the  rea 
son  why  the  general  public  was  always  more 
or  less  at  them.  I  believe  they  were  popu 
lar,  but  I  knew  all  the  time  that  they  would 
have  been  more  popular  if  they  had  been 
38 


Miss  Bellard's   Inspiration 

more  —  well,  humbuggy.  And  you  know  I 
couldn't  stand  that,  uncle,"  she  appealed  to 
him  with  a  sidelong  glance. 

"  No,"  he  assented,  in  a  way  that  made  her 
laugh. 

She  went  on:  "People  like  that,  both  old 
and  young,  and  I  should  have  had  all  the 
unoccupied  human  material  that  goes  into 
women's  clubs  raving  about  me,  if  I  had 
done  some  sort  of  Delsarte  business;  they 
would  have  much  preferred  a  song  and 
dance  to  the  modesty  of  nature  which  I  was 
trying  to  brag  up  by  precept  and  practice.  I 
was  tolerably  adored  by  my  classes,  as  it  was, 
but  I  should  have  had  them  in  ecstasies  if  I 
had  descended  to  the  cheap  kind  of  things 
we  were  taught  to  avoid  in  the  dramatic 
school." 

"Yes,"  Crombie  said,  and  now  Lillias  did 
not  immediately  continue. 

When  she  did,  it  was  to  say,  with  a  silently 
accumulated  frankness,  "The  only  one,  real- 
4  39 


Miss  Bollard's  Inspiration 

ly,  that  thoroughly  understood,  from  the 
first  instant,  what  I  was  driving  at,  was  Mr. 
Craybourne.  I  suppose,"  she  said,  with  an 
other  cast  of  her  eyes,  though  this  time  it 
was  rather  defiant  than  appealing,  towards 
Crombie,  "Aunt  Hester  has  told  you  about 
him?" 

" Not  at  all!    What  about  him?" 

His  effrontery  made  her  laugh  again. 

"  Oh,  that's  another  story,  as  Kipling  says 
— or  used  to  say;  I  believe  he  doesn't  say  it 
now,  any  more.  This  story  only  relates  to 
his  telling  me,  as  soon  as  he  could  manage  to 
get  introduced — which  he  did  by  very  prop 
erly  waiting  and  asking  the  president  to  per 
form  the  ceremony,  when  he  could  have  got 
any  soul  in  the  place  to  do  it  at  once — that 
I  was  the  first  person  to  give  him  the  least 
notion  of  what  nature  was  at." 

"Indeed!"  Crombie  said.  "Did  you  be 
lieve  him?" 

"  Not  immediately.  There's  nothing,"  she 
40 


Miss  Bollard's   Inspiration 

deferred,  "  that  we  suspect  so  much  as  down 
right  openness,  is  there?" 

"It's  often  very  misleading." 

1  'Well,  I  found  out  afterwards  that  he 
really  meant  it.  That,"  she  added,  after  a 
distinct  interval,  "was  what  gave  me  pause," 
and  Crombie  felt  that  she  had  come  to  the 
other  story.  "  There  is  no  use  beating  about 
the  bush,  and  I'm  not  going  to.  Aunt  Hes 
ter,"  she  now  turned  to  Mrs.  Crombie,  "I 
may  as  well  say  first  as  last  that  if  the  Mel- 
lays  hadn't  providentially  written  to  put  me 
off  a  week  I  should  have  invented  some 
providential  excuse  for  coming  to  you  and 
letting  me  meet  Mr.  Craybourne  as  nearly  on 
the  parental  premises  as  I  could  get  them." 

Crombie  stole  a  look  at  his  wife,  but  he 
could  detect  nothing  of  resentment  in  her 
face ;  nothing  but  a  generous  and  protecting 
welcome.  She  laid  her  left  hand  along  the 
table  towards  the  girl,  and  Lillias  put  hers 
gratefully  into  it.  "You  have  done  exactly 


Miss  Bellard's   Inspiration 

right,  my  dear,"  she  said,  and  Lillias  went 
on,  piecing  a  little  break  in  her  voice : 

"Even  if  mother  were  on  the  ground,  and 
not  off  in  the  wilds  of  Europe  somewhere,  I 
should  wish  Uncle  Archie's  approval,  as  I've 
no  father  of  my  own;  for  in  the  kind  of 
scrambling  life  I've  led  I  like  to  have  a  thing 
of  this  kind  perfectly  regular.  I'm  not  the 
least  bit  bohemian,  Aunt  Hester,  though  I 
know  you  always  thought  me  so — 

"No,  my  dear!"  Mrs.  Crombie  protested, 
but  Lillias  tenderly  insisted: 

"Oh  yes,  you  did,  aunt,  and  I  don't 
blame  you;  I  should  have,  myself.  But  at 
heart  I'm  deadly  respectable,  and  Mr.  Cray- 
bourne's  being  an  Englishman  makes  me  all 
the  more  anxious  to  be  more  so;  though  he 
thinks  the  other  kind  of  thing  is  charming, 
and  was  quite  ready  to  be  fetched  by  it — at 
least  in  my  case.  You  see,  I'm  not  having 
any  concealments  from  you!" 

"You   needn't   have,    poor   child!"    Mrs. 
42 


Miss   Bollard's   Inspiration 

Crombie  said,  so  tenderly  that  Crombie  kept 
himself  with  difficulty  from  a  derisory  snort. 

"And  now  you  have  the  whole  thing  be 
fore  you.  I  have  come  to  you  simply  for 
a  social  basis,  a  domestic  hearth,  a  family 
fireside,  and  when  Mr.  Craybourne  comes  I 
want  him  to  find  me  in  a  chimney-corner  be 
longing  to  my  own  kith  and  kin." 

The  terms  of  this  declaration,  and  the 
mixed  tones  in  which  it  was  delivered,  were 
such  as  to  make  Crombie  feel  that  it  need 
not  be  taken  too  seriously,  though  it  could 
not  be  taken  too  earnestly ;  so,  when  his  wife, 
with  an  ad  juratory  frown,  indicated  that  it 
was  for  him,  as  head  of  the  house,  to  make 
their  joint  response,  he  said,  with  a  certain 
hardy  gayety: 

"And  when  is  he  coming?" 

"Oh,  any  moment!"  Lillias  said,  with  a 

rueful  little  smile  full  of  gladness  at  his  light 

daring.     "That  is,  if  one  can  judge  from  his 

already  being  here  before  me.     I  suppose  I 

43 


Miss  Bollard's  Inspiration 

may  say  that  it  wasn't  his  fault  that  we  are 
not  here  on  our  wedding  journey." 

She  turned  from  her  uncle  to  her  aunt  in 
making  this  observation,  and  Mrs.  Crombie 
met  it  in  the  same  spirit.  "Well,  Lillias,  I 
must  say  that  you  have  done  very  wisely  in 
the  whole  matter.  I  should  never  have  for 
given  myself  if  any  fancied  inconvenience  to 
us  had  kept  you  from  coming  to  us  in  such 
an  emergency;  and  no  matter  how  it  turns 
out,  I  shall  write  to  Aggie  that  you  have 
done  everything  that  a  girl  could  do.'* 

"Thank  you,  Aunt  Hester,"  and  the  two 
women  had  a  moment  of  mothering  and 
daughtering  in  which  Crombie  could  not  join 
them. 

"  Well,  I  am  prepared  to  do  anything  you 
want,"  he  said,  with  an  ironical  ease,  and 
a  genuine  interest  in  the  affair  which  he 
thought  it  more  manly  to  conceal.  "Do  I 
understand  that  Mr.  Craybourne  will  ask  for 
me  again?" 

44 


Miss  Bollard's   Inspiration 

"Yes,  indeed!"  the  girl  said.  "We  are 
not  out  there  now,  and  he  knows  it." 

"And  what  am  I  to  say,  when  he  asks  to 
see  you — if  he  does?" 

Lillias  looked  at  her  aunt,  who  visibly  fail 
ed  to  formulate  a  line  of  conduct  for  Crombie, 
and  then  she  looked  back  at  him,  and  said, 
caressingly,  "Oh,  just  trust  to  the  inspira 
tion  of  the  moment,  uncle." 

"Then  you  leave  it  all  to  me?" 

"Quite." 

"Well,  I've  never  had  the  chance  of  for 
bidding  a  young  man  my  house  before,  and 
perhaps  I  sha'n't  do  it  in  just  the  way  that 
this  Mr.  Craybourne  is  used  to,  but  I  think  I 
can  do  it  effectually." 

Crombie  wore  the  mustache  of  his  period 
branching  into  the  side  whiskers  of  the  early 
eighteen-sixties,  and  it  was  with  a  fine  flare 
of  both  that  he  now  tilted  his  head  on  one 
side  and  waited  for  his  wife  and  niece  to  pre 
cede  him  out  of  the  breakfast-room.  His 
45 


Miss  Bellard's   Inspiration 

beard  and  the  gossamer  traces  of  his  hair 
were  faded  from  their  earlier  red  to  an  agree 
able  yellowish  white,  and  his  bulging  blue 
eyes  matched  very  well  with  them  and  with 
a  complexion  of  ancestral  Scotch  floridity, 
so  that  as  he  stood  leaning  forward  with  his 
thumbs  in  his  waistcoat-pockets  he  was  such 
a  fine  elderly  Du  Maurier  military  type  that 
Lillias  could  hardly  forbear  throwing  him  a 
kiss.  She  did  forbear,  but  she  forbore  with 
a  backward  roll  of  her  own  eyes  which  had 
all  the  effect  of  a  thrown  kiss.  "You'll  be 
splendid,  Uncle  Archie,  whatever  you  do," 
she  encouraged  him,  though  it  made  him 
tremble,  almost,  to  see  her  put  her  arm  round 
her  aunt's  waist.  He  felt  that  she  might 
carry  it  too  far  in  constituting  herself  Mrs. 
Crombie's  protegee,  and  in  fact  he  fancied 
Mrs.  Crombie's  waist  tacitly  stiffening  under 
the  caress. 

To  make  sure,  he  asked  her,  when  Lillias 
had  gone  up  to  her  room  for  a  moment, 
46 


Miss  Bellard's  Inspiration 

"Then   you've   changed   your   mind   about 
her?" 

"Not  at  all!"  his  wife  returned,  in  the 
scorn  often  used  by  women  to  give  dignity 
to  a  misstatement.  "  I  feel  exactly  as  I  did, 
though  in  an  entirely  different  way.  She  is 
not  underhanded,  but  overhanded,  and  she 
thinks  that  if  she  is  perfectly  transparent  I 
shall  not  see  through  her.  All  is,  I  shall  have 
to  fight  her  in  the  open." 

"Where  did  you  get  that  expression?" 
Crombie  parleyed. 

"I  don't  know:  in  some  of  those  English 
South  African  accounts.  You  know  what  I 
mean.  She  is  determined  to  be  married 
from  this  house." 

Crombie  caught  his  breath,  and  then 
whistled. 

"I  can  see  it,"  she  went  on,  "as  plain 
as  the  nose  on  my  face.  But  I  can  tell 
her  she  won't  do  it,  without  my  know 
ing  it." 

47 


Miss  Bellard's   Inspiration 

"  I  wish  I  knew  what  you  meant  by  that," 
Crombie  sighed. 

"Well,  you  will  see." 

Just  then  Lillias's  trailing  skirts  were  heard 
on  the  stairs  like  the  drift  of  fallen  leaves 
down  a  forest  path. 


IV 


!R.  CRAYBOURNE,  whatever 
were  his  impulses  to  an  earlier 
call,  had  quelled  them  so  far 
as  not  to  come  before  eleven 
o'clock  in  the  morning,  though  why  he  should 
have  come  before  the  afternoon  can  be  ex 
plained  only  on  the  ground  that  the  country 
informality  and  the  summer  heat  had  relaxed 
him  to  a  social  freedom  which  he  might  not 
otherwise  have  permitted  himself.  When  he 
did  come,  however,  he  was  not  relaxed  to  the 
extreme  of  asking  for  Miss  Bellard.  He  asked 
for  Mr.  Crombie,  and  he  was  shown  to  him  in 
the  library,  a  room  that  few  men  could  have 
had  so  little  need  of  as  the  master  of  the 
house.  It  had  some  books,  mostly  dishevelled 
paper  copies  of  novels,  tumbling  about  on  its 
49 


Miss   Bellard's   Inspiration 

shelves;  and  it  was  stuck  round  with  Crom 
bie' s  sketches  on  pasteboard  and  canvas, 
memories  of  The  Surges  and  its  scenery,  and 
forecasts  of  the  White  Mountain  landscape, 
and  bits  of  the  Saco  valley.  Crombie  was  so 
old-fashioned  in  his  methods  that  these  at 
tempts  were  like  rejected  studies  by  poorer 
masters  of  the  extinct  White  Mountain  school. 
He  was  ranging  among  them,  trying,  with  his 
mouth  puckered  to  an  inaudible  whistle,  to 
make  choice  of  some  one  or  other  that  might 
be  carried  farther,  when  Mr.  Craybourne 
rang.  Crombie  had  almost  forgotten  about 
him,  but  he  now  started  into  a  sense  of  him 
that  took  all  nature  out  of  his  careless  ease. 
He  came  forward,  however,  with  outstretched 
hand,  and  welcomed  him.  He  said,  "Ah, 
how  do  you  do,  Mr.  Craybourne?"  in  a  tone 
of  expectation  that  struck  upon  his  own  ear 
as  not  quite  the  thing;  and  he  did  not 
know  whether  he  mended  matters  much  or 
not  by  adding,  "  Sorry  not  to  have  been 
50 


Miss  BellarcTs   Inspiration 

at  home  when   you  called  yesterday.     Sit 
down." 

"Oh,  thank  you,  thank  you,"  Mr.  Cray- 
bourne  said,  and  after  faltering  a  moment  on 
foot  he  folded  himself  down  and  down,  by 
what  appeared  to  Crombie  successive  plica 
tions,  into  the  rather  low  chair  appointed 
him.  The  result  of  the  process  brought  his 
face  somewhat  more  on  a  level  with  Crom- 
bie's,  who  was  himself  of  such  a  good  height 
that  he  was  at  least  not  used  to  being  tow 
ered  over,  and  who  saw  that  Mr.  Cray- 
bourne's  face  was  a  decidedly  handsome, 
tanned  face,  regular  in  feature,  with  rather 
deep-set  blue  eyes,  and  a  skin  burnished  on 
the  cheeks,  chin,  and  upper  lip  by  the  very 
close  shave  which  the  barber  at  the  Saco 
Shore  House  had  just  given  him.  He  diffused, 
involuntarily,  as  Crombie  decided,  a  faint  and 
fainter  odor  of  the  bay-rum  which  he  had  not 
been  quick  enough  to  keep  the  barber  from 
dabbling  him  with  after  the  close  shave ;  and 


Miss  BeUard's   Inspiration 

he  also  seemed  to  have  a  good  deal  of  wrist, 
from  which,  on  the  right  and  left,  he  nervous 
ly  clasped  his  hat  with  slender,  gentlemanly 
hands.  His  hands  had  been  liberated  from 
the  labor  of  the  fields  by  the  failure  of  his 
ranching  experiment  so  long  as  to  have  lost 
the  brown  of  the  sun  and  wind,  but  they  had 
the  tone  of  his  complexion.  The  clasp  he 
had  given  Crombie  was  soft,  yet  firm,  and  not 
at  all  damp,  in  spite  of  the  nervousness  that 
brought  some  perspiration  to  the  young 
man's  straight,  comely  forehead. 

The  embarrassing  variety  of  topics  which 
Crombie  had  to  choose  from,  in  view  of  the 
intimate  relations  he  found  himself  in  with 
this  perfect  stranger  through  the  frankness  of 
Lillias  Bellard,  kept  him  silent  for  a  breath 
or  two.  Then  he  said,  "Fine  day." 

"Yes,"  Mr.  Craybourne  admitted,  with  an 
indrawn  sigh,  as  if  from  the  sense  of  reprieve. 
11  But  I  suppose  you  expect  fine  weather  at 
this  time  of  year." 

52 


Miss  Bellard's  Inspiration 

Crombie  saw  his  opening  and  said,  "Yes, 
rather  oftener  than  we  get  it,"  and  this  made 
way  for  a  mutual  smile  of  such  good-fellow 
ship  that  it  was  easy  for  him  to  add,  "  I  sup 
pose  I  needn't  conceal  that  I  know  you  wish 
to  ask  for  Miss  Bellard."  Mr.  Craybourne 
could  apparently  do  no  more  than  laugh 
gratefully,  and  Crombie  said,  "  She  came  last 
night,  you  know." 

"Yes,  I  know.  I — I  had  the  pleasure  of 
seeing  her  at  the  station,"  the  young  man 
innocently  said,  and  Crombie  concealed  any 
surprise  he  felt  at  having  ascertained  a  limit 
to  Lillias  Bellard's  frankness,  which  had 
seemed  so  unbounded.  In  fact,  for  a  few 
seconds  he  felt  no  surprise,  or  anything  at  all, 
the  effect  of  Mr.  Craybourne' s  simple  state 
ment  was  so  benumbing.  Then  abysms  of 
astonishment  began  to  open  within  him,  to 
which  there  was  no  bottom.  Had  the  girl 
meant  to  tell  her  aunt  of  this  meeting,  and 
had  the  moment  slipped  by  her  in  her  first 
53 


Miss  Bellard's   Inspiration 

grapple  with  the  fact  of  Craybourne's  pres 
ence,  and  got  so  far  by  that  she  could  not 
overtake  it  ?  If  she  had  meant  to  keep  their 
meeting  a  secret,  why  had  not  she  charged 
Craybourne  not  to  speak  of  it?  There  was 
mystery  here  which  Crombie's  plummet 
could  not  fathom,  and  before  which  he  shud 
dered  in  conjecture,  while  he  smiled  to  think 
how  completely  his  wife  had  been  taken  in 
by  her  niece.  He  first  abhorred  the  girl's 
duplicity,  and  then  his  abhorrence  yielded  to 
pity  for  the  unknown  necessity  which  had 
forced  her  to  it,  and  at  the  same  time  his  bare 
scalp  felt  the  ghost  of  its  vanished  hair  rise  on 
it  at  the  thought  of  what  Mrs.  Crombie 
might  do  and  say  when  she  found  out  the 
fact. 

"  Oh,  I  didn't  know  you  met  her,"  he  said, 
hollowly,  and  not  very  wisely. 

"I  said  saw,"  the  young  man  returned. 
"  I  don't  think  she  saw  me.  I  didn't  speak 
with  her;  she  preferred  that  we  should  meet 
54 


Miss  Bellard's   Inspiration 

first  at  your  house.     That  is  why  I — I  have 
come  so  unwarrantably  early." 

Crombie  had  two  reasons  for  falling  upon 
the  young  man :  one,  resentment  for  having 
been  so  misled,  and  the  other  relief  for  being 
rescued  from  the  error,  which,  now  it  was 
gone,  he  knew  must  have  left  him  without  a 
shred  of  respect  for  the  poor  child  whose  diffi 
cult  little  romance  had  enlisted  his  interest. 
But  he  spared  his  guest,  and  merely  said, 
"  Oh,  I  see!"  and  smiled  fatuously,  in  adding, 
"  I  thought  it  was  rather  odd  she  hadn't  men 
tioned  it.  Ah,  ha,  ha !' '  he  ended,  in  rehearsal 
of  the  merriment  of  a  man  laughing  to  his 
wife  at  a  good  joke  on  himself.  He  experi 
enced  such  a  kindly  revulsion  toward  Lillias, 
whom  he  had  wronged  by  his  error,  that  he 
could  not  bear  any  longer  to  keep  her  from 
her  happiness  in  her  lover's  presence.  "  If 
you  will  excuse  me,"  he  said,  with  a  polite 
ness  that  was  almost  tender,  "  I  will  tell  the 
ladies  you  are  here." 
5  55 


Miss  Bellard's    Inspiration 

He  was  moving  toward  the  door  when  he 
was  arrested  by  a  "Well — ah — well,"  from 
Mr.  Craybourne,  which  sounded  like  the  pre 
liminary  of  an  entreaty  for  a  stay  of  action. 
He  turned,  and  the  young  man,  still  crouch 
ing  over  his  hat,  made  a  more  successful  effort 
for  coherence,  "  I  really  oughtn't  to  see  Miss 
Bellard — or,  I  should  say,  Mrs.  Crombie — till 
I  have  given  you  some  notion  of  how  matters 
stand  with  us  —  Miss  Bellard,  I  mean.  I 
don't  know  what  Miss  Bellard  has  said,  or 
whether  she  has  told  you  how  entirely  I  am 
without  claim  on  her?" 

Crombie  rather  liked  this,  which  he  thought 
manly,  but  he  could  only  say,  "  Oh,  we  quite 
understand  that  it's  only  in  the  pour  parler 
stage,  and  nobody's  committed."  That  was 
the  year  of  the  Spanish  War,  and  every  one 
spoke  more  or  less  in  the  diplomatic  French 
of  the  opening  negotiations  for  peace;  the 
papers  all  had  a  touch  of  it. 

The  Englishman  returned  with  a  certain 


Miss  Bollard's    Inspiration 

stiffness  of  self-assertion  against  the  prompt 
American  pliability  of  his  host,  "  You're  very 
good,  I'm  sure.  But  I  can't  allow  you  to 
suppose  that  /  am  not  committed.  If  I  had 
not  felt  myself  so  absolutely  committed  from 
the  moment  I  first  heard  Miss  Bellard  speak, 
and  first  saw  her,  I  should  not  have  felt  at 
liberty  to  address  her,  in  the  absence  of  her 
natural — her  family.  Of  course,  I  had  the 
countenance  of  the  president  of  the  univer 
sity  ;  I  had  the  honor  of  an  introduction  from 
him;  but  it  was  the  other  —  feeling  that 
seemed  to  warrant  me  in — ah — going  on." 
The  young  man  spoke  with  courage,  but  not 
steadily;  Crombie  noticed  with  a  mixture  of 
pathos  and  amusement  that  his  chin  was 
trembling. 

"  Oh  yes.  Quite  right.  I  meant  that  she 
was  not  committed — 

"No,"  the  Englishman  said,  "and  I  am 
prepared  now,  if  Mrs.  Crombie  thinks  there 
has  been  anything  irregular  in  my — my — 
57 


Miss    Bellard's    Inspiration 

procedure,  to  go  away  without  seeing  Miss 
Bellard,  and  wait  till  her  mother  returns; 
though  I  believe  that  is  rather  indefinite. 
Not  that  I  couldn't  wait  indefinitely." 

Crombie  had  a  notion  of  not  being  out 
done  in  punctiliousness,  if  it  came  to  that, 
and  he  put  on  the  air  of  giving  the  matter 
thought.  "  She  would  want  her  mother's 
approval,  naturally.  But — I  don't  think  it's 
necessary  for  you  to  go  away.  In  fact"- 
he  caught  at  the  inspiration — "  Mrs.  Crombie 
was  rather  hoping  you  would  stay  to  lunch." 

"Why,  you're  very  good,"  Craybourne 
said.  "I'm  sure  I  shall  be  very  glad  if— 
But  I  should  like,  if  it  won't  bore  you,  or  if 
you  won't  think  it  unnecessary — to  tell  you — 
I  don't  know  whether  she  has  told  you — 
that  I  have  formally  offered  myself  to  Miss 
Bellard.  It  came  to  that  very  soon.  Am  I 
tiring  you?  Are  you  interested?" 

"  Oh,  quite.     Not  at  all,  I  assure  you.    Go 
on!"     Crombie,  in  token  of  his  patience  and 


Miss  Bellard's   Inspiration 

concern,  relapsed  into  the  chair  from  which 
he  had  risen,  and  took  from  the  table  a  paper- 
knife  offering  itself  there  to  his  hand. 

"The  whole  affair  has  been  so — different, 
that  I  should  be  glad  to  make  sure  that  from 
the — the — from  your  point  of  view,  I  have 
been — warranted . ' ' 

Crombie  bowed  seriously  and  the  English 
man  went  on. 

"  I  can't  say,  looking  back,  that  I  was 
actuated  by  anything  better  than  an  idle 
curiosity  in  going,  the  first  time,  to  hear  Miss 
Bellard  lecture.  I  should  like  you  to  know 
that;  she  knows  it.  I  was  at  the  hotel,  with 
nothing  to  do,  and  I  heard  her  lectures  talked 
of.  Not,"  the  young  man  made  haste  to 
add,  "in  any  slighting  way.  But  nearly 
everything  is  a  joke,  out  there,  and  I  can't  say 
that  Miss  Bellard's  lectures  were  taken  very 
seriously  by  the  hotel  acquaintance  who  men 
tioned  them:  he  spoke  of  them  as  a  good 
show;  he  has  apologized  and  explained  that 
59 


Miss  Bollard's   Inspiration 

he  meant  nothing  derogatory.  They  were 
very  popular.  Ah  —  have  you  —  you  have 
heard  her — lecture?" 

Crombie  shook  his  head.  "  She  took  it  up, 
I've  understood,  after  leaving  the  dramatic 
school,  as  a  means  of — independence.  We 
did  not  know  of  it  till  we  heard  of  her  ap 
pointment  to  a  lectureship,  out  there.  I 
must  confess  we  had  our  misgivings." 

The  young  man  ardently  cried,  "You 
needn't  have  had!  Anything  more  graceful, 
more  beautiful,  more  natural,  more  artistic, 
more  divine—  He  stopped  for  want  of 
words,  and  then  resumed  at  another  point. 
"  I  will  say,  that  I  was  chiefly  interested,  as 
far  as  I  was  worthily  interested,  by  the  fact, 
which  I  heard,  that  Miss  Bellard  was  doing  it 
for,  as  you  say,  independence.  You  may 
think  it  odd,  and  you  may  not  agree  with 
me  at  all,  but  I  go  in  for  women  doing  that 
kind  of  thing.  I  suppose  that  I  might  be 
considered  an  extremist  by  some  people. 
60 


Miss  Bollard's   Inspiration 

But  I  believe  that  marriage  would  be  hap 
pier,  generally  speaking,  if  the  wife  and  hus 
band  were  always  pecuniarily  independent 
of  each  other." 

Crombie  thought  that  he  had  heard  of 
some  marriages,  especially  international  mar 
riages,  in  which  the  wife  alone  had  the  means 
of  pecuniary  independence,  but  he  could  not 
note  these  instances,  even  in  the  way  of  jest, 
to  the  eager  and  ingenuous  countenance  of 
his  visitor.'  He  murmured,  " Quite  so,"  and 
Mr.  Craybourne  went  on. 

"  I  am  happy  to  say  that  Miss  Bellard  and 
I  are  of  the  same  opinion  on  this  point.  In 
fact,  it  was  the  very  first  point  that  came  up 
for  discussion  between  us,  and  it  was  she  who 
urged  it  first." 

It  seemed,  hazily  enough,  to  Crombie's 
intelligence,  that  the  young  pair  who  could 
have  reached  this  point  in  their  love-making, 
without  anything  more  definite  than  the 
girl's  consent  to  be  made  love  to,  were  mod- 
61 


Miss  Bellard's   Inspiration 

ern  beyond  any  fin-de-sikcle  newness  of  the 
century  then  ending ;  but  it  was  easier  not  to 
grasp  the  fact,  and  he  did  not  grasp  it,  at 
least  very  firmly.  Hazily,  also,  he  conceived 
of  the  young  man's  liberal-mindedness  as  a 
willingness  to  let  a  wife  make  her  own  living, 
which  he  had  known  carried  to  the  excess  of 
letting  her  make  her  husband's  living  too; 
but  again  he  was  unable  to  impart  his  re 
flections.  He  said,  "  I  believe  Lillias  has  de 
veloped  in  that  direction  since  we  —  have 
seen  much  of  her.  One  finds  girls  feeling  like 
that  a  good  deal,  nowadays." 

"Yes,"  the  young  man  assented,  "but  not 
quite  in  her  way,   I  believe."     He  seemed 
proud  of  her  singularity,  and  jealous  of  its 
attribution  to  any  one  else .     "I  don' t  know, ' ' 
he  continued,  "whether  I  can  explain — and 
in  fact  it's  only  in  the  most  provisional  way 
that  I  can  allow  myself  to  talk  of  it  at  all- 
how  this  breadth  of  view — it's  a  kind  of  cant, 
but  I  don't  find  just  the  words  I  want— 
62 


Miss  Bellard's  Inspiration 

added  to  the  charm  she  had  for  me  from  the 
first  moment.  I  understood,  when  I  first 
saw  her,  that  I  saw  her  earning  her  living; 
and  later  I  was  told  that  she  had  prepared 
herself  to  earn  her  living  on  the  stage.  It 
was  impossible  for  me,  from  the  beginning, 
not  to  think  of  how  I  should  feel  toward  such 
a  fact  if  she  were  my  wife;  I  don't  justify  my 
presumption,  because  it  was  in  no  degree 
voluntary:  the  case,  as  it  were,  supposed  it 
self,  and  I  did  ask  myself  the  question  on 
these  very  indefensible  grounds.  There  could 
only  be  one  answer.  I  ought  to  say  that  I 
had  read  myself  and  thought  myself  out  of  the 
prejudices  of  what  I  should  once  have  called 
my  class,  and  I  could  feel  nothing  but  admira 
tion  and  reverence  for  her — her  attitude." 

The  young  man's  words  flowed  rapidly 
enough,  but  there  had  not  ceased  to  be  in 
their  stream  that  tremor,  that  vibrant  eager 
ness  which  had  moved  Crombie.  He  pricked 
up  his  thin  red  ears  at  the  spare  allusion  to 
63 


Miss  Bellard's   Inspiration 

Mr.  Craybourne's  social  rank,  a  thing  which 
the  true  American  prefers  even  in  the  Eng 
lishman  who  renounces  it,  especially  if  the 
Englishman  is  seeking  an  alliance  with  his 
family;  yet  the  liking  with  which  this  Mr. 
Craybourne  had  inspired  him  was  not  mean. 
It  was  merely  qualified  with  a  satisfaction 
in  his  being  socially  a  gentleman,  which  he 
would  not  have  exacted  from  an  American 
pretendant;  such  a  pretendant  would  have 
been  wholly  left  to  the  instinct  and  knowl 
edge  of  the  girl  in  that  case. 

He  now  merely  said,  "  That's  all  right,  Mr. 
Craybourne.  It's  a  matter  for  you  to  settle 
with  Lillias.  In  fact,  with  a  girl  who  has 
been  taking  care  of  herself  for  the  last  year 
or  two,  I  should  be  a  little  shy  of  interfering 
in  any  way.  But  she  has  a  feeling,  which  we 
consider  a  very  right  one,  that — that  if  she's 
got  some  thinking  over  to  do,  she  had  better 
do  it  under  her  family  roof,  or  as  nearly  as 
she  can  come  to  one." 
64 


Miss  Bellard's   Inspiration 

Here,  Crombie  had  got  to  the  end  of  his 
tether,  and  had  so  literally  nothing  more  to 
say  that  he  was  glad  of  Craybourne's  eager 
suggestion,  "Then  I  have  your  permission? 
I  may—" 

"Why,  certainly,"  Crombie  said,  and  again 
he  started  toward  the  door.  "  I  will  tell  Mrs. 
Crombie  you  are  here." 

"A  moment!"  the  young  man  interposed. 
"  I  ought  to  apologize  perhaps  for — for  turn 
ing  up  here  yesterday,  before  Miss  Bellard's 
arrival — when — 

"  I  don't  think  that's  a  thing  a  girl  could 
really  object  to,  no  matter  how  matters 
stood,"  Crombie  said. 

"I  was  hoping,"  the  young  man  pursued, 
' '  for  some  such  interview  as  this,  and  for  the 
opportunity  of  speaking  of  a  point  on  which 
I'm  told  that  Americans  are  rather  more  sen 
sitive  than  Englishmen.  I  wish  to  say  that 
there  is  no  question  whatever  of — of  money 
in  my  mind ;  a  dot,  or  that  kind  of  thing.  If 
65 


Miss   Bollard's    Inspiration, 

the  time  ever  came  when  Miss  Bellard  chose 
to  abandon  her  independent  career,  there 
would  be  sufficient  provision  for  the  future. 
My  elder  brother  was  naturally  my  father's 
heir ;  but  an  uncle  of  mine  left  me  something 
which  I  haven't  quite  made  ducks  and  drakes 
of." 

He  smiled  a  little  anxiously,  and  Crombie 
said,  largely,  "Oh,  that' sail  right,  Mr.  Cray- 
bourne.  The  great  thing  is  whether  you  can 
make  up  your  minds  to  each  other." 

"Yes!"  the  young  man  deeply  sighed. 
"Whether  she  can." 


'ELL,  I  thoroughly  like  him," 
Mrs.  Crombie  said,  looking  at 
the  backs  of  Lillias  and  Cray- 
bourne  narrowing  in  the  per 
spective  as  they  took  their  way  down  the 
lane  that  led  from  the  cottage  grounds  to 
the  banks  of  the  Saco.  The  meeting  of  the 
lovers  had  taken  place  under  her'  eye  in 
Crombie' s  library,  and  she  had  been  pleased 
with  his  discreet  ardor,  and  the  girl's  plain 
good  sense.  They  had  all  sat  down  for 
some  time,  and  then  Mrs.  Crombie  had 
eliminated  herself  in  some  housekeeping  in 
terest,  discovering  in  the  act  that  Crombie 
had  already  disappeared.  Lillias  and  Cray- 
bourne  remained  together  for  some  time 
longer,  when  she  joined  her  aunt  up-stairs, 
67 


Miss  Bellard's   Inspiration 

and  said  she  had  come  for  her  hat :  she  was 
going  out  with  Mr.  Craybourne  to  explore. 
Mrs.  Crombie  bade  her  be  sure  and  be  back 
to  lunch  promptly,  and  she  now  added  to 
Crombie,  "And  I  like  her.  She  is  a  good 
girl." 

"Almost  too  good  to  be  true,"  Crombie 
suggested  cynically. 

"No;  I've  quite  changed  my  mind  about 
that.  I  believe  Lillias  is  just  what  we  see 
her.  What  became  of  you  so  suddenly?" 

"Was  it  sudden?  I  didn't  seem  to  be 
needed.  I  had  had  a  good  deal  of  him  before 
you  came  in." 

"  There  is  a  good  deal  of  him,  in  one  way," 
she  reflected.  "He  is  very  tall;  and  Lillias 
is  not  a  tall  girl;  she  is  certainly  not  'new' 
in  that  way.  But  she  can  manage.  She 
is  managing  now.  Look  at  them!  She  is 
keeping  just  the  right  distance  and  at  the 
proper  angle  from  him,  so  that  the  difference 
won't  be  noticed.  I  know  that  she  got  that 
68 


Miss   Bellard's   Inspiration 

summer  hat  of  hers  so  as  to  reduce  his 
height." 

"  One  would  think,"  Crombie  said,  gloom 
ily,  "that  you  liked  her  illusiveness." 

" She  isn't  illusive  in  the  essentials;  but  in 
some  things  a  girl  has  to  be  illusive;  and 
Lillias  has  been  left  to  do  for  herself  in  a 
great  many  things  where  most  girls'  mothers 
are  illusive  for  them.  I  don't  see  how  Ag 
gie  can  excuse  herself.  But  you  certainly 
have  the  gift  of  choosing  the  most  offensive 
expressions !  One  would  think  you  really  dis 
liked  the  child.  Aren't  you  glad  to  see  her 
so  happy?" 

"  Well,  I  haven't  quite  adjusted  myself  yet 
to  having  such  a  well-spring  of  pleasure 
turned  on  in  the  house.  I  haven't  got  over 
sympathizing  with  you  at  her  breaking  into 
your  tranquillity." 

"  Yes,  there  is  that,  and  it  is  very  nice  of 
you  to  remember  it,  but  you  mustn't  lay  it 
up  against  her.  I  didn't  know  she  was  going 
69 


Miss  Bellard's   Inspiration 

to  be  so  interesting.  She  is  very  interesting. 
I  wish  you  could  have  heard  her  telling  all 
about  her  life  out  there.  What  made  you 
keep  us  waiting  so  long?" 

"Was  she  impatient?  I  had  to  let  him 
free  his  mind.  He  wanted  to  tell  me  a  lot 
of  things.  Principally  that  he  approved  of 
her  independence,  but  if  she  ever  wanted  to 
go  back  on  it,  he  had  money  enough  for  them 
both." 

"He  has?  I  don't  believe  Lillias  knows 
that.  And  well?" 

"That  he  doesn't  expect  anything  with 
her." 

"Well,  that  is  certainly  ideal!  He  cer 
tainly  isn't  a  common  Englishman." 

"  He  doesn't  seem  to  be  a  noble  one,  either. 
It's  the  noble  ones  that  go  in  for  the  money." 

"  You  know  what  I  mean,  and  I  hope  Lil 
lias  will  make  up  her  mind  to  have  him  before 
he  leaves.  How  long  is  he  going  to  stay?" 

"1  didn't  ask  him." 
70 


Miss  Bellard's   Inspiration 

"  Of  course  not.  But  I  thought  he  might 
have  mentioned  it.  I'm  glad,  anyway,  that 
you  asked  him  to  lunch." 

"Oh,  I  thought  I  might  as  well  have  a 
hand  in  bu' sting  our  blissful  calm." 

"  What's  the  matter  with  you,  Archi 
bald?"  she  turned  on  him  with  the  demand, 
and  he  at  once  denied  that  there  was  any 
thing  the  matter. 

Whether  she  believed  him  or  not,  or 
thought  that  she  could  get  it  out  of  him 
better  some  other  time,  she  let  him  be  for  the 
present,  and  went  about  seeing  that  luncheon 
should  be  of  the  signal  character  which  be 
fitted  the  occasion,  and  they  did  not  meet 
again  till  they  sat  down  at  table  with  the 
young  people.  Crombie  went  out,  charged 
to  go  quite  in  the  opposite  direction  from 
that  they  had  taken,  and  did  one  of  his  ri 
diculous  sketches,  which  he  knew  himself 
were  bad,  and  could  hardly  forgive  people 
for  pretending  to  admire,  but  which  amused 


Miss  Bellard's   Inspiration 

for  him  a  leisure  otherwise  intolerable.  He 
did  not  come  in  till  quite  luncheon-time,  and 
so  escaped  the  duty  of  entertaining  Mr. 
Craybourne  in  the  library,  when  Lillias  had 
brought  the  young  man  back  with  her  half 
an  hour  earlier,  so  that  she  could  change  her 
dress,  and  talk  with  her  aunt,  whom  she 
found  to  be  lying  in  wait  for  her. 

"Come  in,  Aunt  Hester!"  she  invited  the 
hungering  apparition  that  showed  itself  at 
her  doorway,  and  she  added  with  her  splendid 
frankness,  "Well,  it  has  been  a  perfect  land 
slide." 

' '  What  do  you  mean  ?  Have  you  accepted 
him?" 

"No,  but  I  am  quite  prepared  to  do  so— 
emotionally  prepared.  We  went  over  to 
look  at  the  slide,  across  the  river,  by  your 
ferry,  and  when  I  saw  how  it  had  done  the 
work  of  ages,  in  about  three  minutes  from 
the  time  it  started,  as  the  owner  of  the  farm 
said,  and  covered  about  twenty  acres  with 
72 


Miss  Bellard's   Inspiration 

granite  and  gravel,  and  leaves  ground  to  pulp, 
and  logs  of  big  trees  chewed  off,  and  packed 
full  of  sand  so  that  you  couldn't  strike  an 
axe  into  them,  I  felt  just  so  myself.  The 
undermining  separation  of  the  last  four 
weeks  had  had  its  effect,  and  the  first  four 
minutes  with  him  did  the  rest,  and  I  should 
be  asking  your  congratulations  now,  Aunt 
Hester,  if  it  had  not  been  for  Mr.  Cray- 
bourne's  delicacy  in  giving  me  more  time 
than  I  wanted.  He  is  a  dear,  but  he  is 
making  it  difficult." 

"Why,  Lillias,  I  don't  suppose  he  thinks 
he  is  allowed  to  speak  unless  he  has  some 
hint  from  you,"  Mrs.  Crombie  said,  in  high 
approval  of  him. 

1  'Do  you  think  so,  Aunt  Hester?  Well, 
that  is  rather  embarrassing.  Is  it  usual  for 
girls  to  hint?" 

"  Not  unless  it  is  absolutely  necessary,  my 
dear." 

"Did  you— hint?" 

73 


Miss   Bollard's   Inspiration 

"  Certainly  not !     What  a  question !" 
"Because  if  you  did,   I  think  I  will.     I 
think  it  had  better  be  over." 

While  they  talked,  Lillias  was  effecting 
what  is  called  by  performers  in  the  drama 
where  one  actor  takes  several  parts,  a  light 
ning  change,  and  was  reappearing  from  the 
pastoral  simplicity  of  her  walking-dress  in 
the  elaboration  of  an  afternoon  toilette. 
The  change  was  not  exactly  imperative, 
under  the  circumstances,  and  yet  both  of  the 
women  felt  that  it  was  highly  desirable,  and 
were  perhaps  tacitly  agreed  that  if  a  hint 
were  not  possible,  there  were  means  of  other 
wise  doing  its  work  quite  as  effectually. 
When  Lillias  came  down  to  join  Mr.  Cray- 
bourne  in  the  library  before  luncheon,  and 
wait  with  him  there  for  her  aunt  and  uncle, 
she  was  what  is  known  to  her  sex  as  a  dream. 
The  word  is  commonly  used  in  description 
of  a  very  visionary  gown,  but  Lillias  so  thor 
oughly  characterized  her  gown,  and  subdued 
74 


Miss  Bellard's  Inspiration 

it  to  her  personality  that  she  was  herself  the 
dream. 

The  young  man  glowed  all  over  love  at 
sight  of  her,  and  a  landslide  must  have  taken 
place  in  him  too.  He  seized  the  first  minutes 
or  moments  that  they  could  have  together, 
and  huskily  entreated,  "Lillias,  why  not  say 
it  now?'* 

She  smiled  mystically,  beatifically,  and 
"Well!"  she  said. 

Then  everything  was  said  between  them, 
and  Crombie  and  his  wife  coming  in  directly, 
Lillias  told  them. 

There  began  with  the  whole  household  now 
a  series  of  experiences  as  idyllic  as  any  which 
have  been  put  into  poetry,  but  which  would 
have  very  much  the  effect  of  prose  if  they 
were  successively  presented.  They  had  for 
the  lovers,  in  fact,  no  succession,  but  a  sort  of 
rapturous  simultaneity,  imaginable  of  a  state 
of  being  in  which  the  problem  of  time  and 
space  was  eliminated.  They  were  together, 
75 


Miss  Bellard's   Inspiration 

as  it  seemed,  by  mere  volition,  and  the  hotel 
was  so  near,  and  his  presence  in  the  Crombie 
cottage  so  constant,  that  there  was  no  ques 
tion  to  his  consciousness  of  coming  or  going. 
Lillias  knew  of  course  that  he  took  so  many 
of  his  meals  at  her  uncle's  table  that  the  ex 
ception  was  when  he  remained  at  the  hotel 
for  any  of  them.  He  got  to  coming  over  to 
breakfast,  and  with  her  aunt's  habit  of 
breakfasting  in  bed,  and  her  uncle's  way  of 
breakfasting  whenever  he  happened  to  get 
up,  they  mostly  had  the  meal  alone  together. 
Lillias  would  say  to  Mrs.  Crombie' s  neat 
waitress,  "  You  needn't  stay,  Norah.  I  think 
we  can  take  care  of  ourselves,"  and  then 
Norah  would  not  stay. 

One  morning,  when  Lillias  and  Norah  had 
played  this  comedy,  the  young  man  said,  with 
a  worshipping  look  at  the  face  which  Lillias 
had  given  the  effect  of  a  very  pretty  girl's, 
"I  suppose  it  will  be  something  like  this 
when  we  are  really— 

76 


Miss  Bellard's    Inspiration 

He  hesitated  with  a  fine  modesty,  and  she 
suggested,  "It?" 

"Yes!  And  what  a  nice,  comprehensive 
little  word!" 

"You  can  say  a  good  deal,"  she  returned, 
thoughtfully,  "with  almost  any  sort  of  word 
when  you  mean  it.  But  I  was  thinking," 
she  added,  "that  perhaps  it  mightn't  be  al 
ways  so." 

"Why  not?" 

"Well — is  your  coffee  just  right?" 

"Sweetness  and  strength  have  kissed  each 
other  in  it.  But  why  mightn't  it  be  always 
so?" 

"  Oh,  I  don't  know.  Sometimes  we  might 
be  cross.  I  think  I  am  rather  apt  to  be  cross 
in  the  morning." 

"  I  have  never  seen  you  so,  Lillias!" 

"You  never  have  seen  me  in  the  morning 
more  than  half  a  dozen  times,  yet.  But  I 
suppose  we  shall  have  our  little  outs." 

"Quarrels?" 

77 


Miss  Bellard's  Inspiration 

"  Yes,  regular  rows." 

Craybourne  no  longer  protested  against  the 
notion.  He  asked,  "  I  wonder  what  made 
you  think  of  that?" 

"Why?" 

"  Because  it  was  in  my  mind  too,  and  I  was 
trembling  to  think  it  mightn't  be  always  like 
this." 

"  Probably,  then,  I  got  it  out  of  your  mind. 
It  was  a  case  of  thought-transference."  She 
smiled  in  radiant  burlesque,  but  immediately 
asked,  with  a  dangerous  little  inflation  of  the 
nostrils,  which  escaped  him,  "Or  perhaps 
there  was  something  in  my  behavior  that 
suggested  it  to  you?" 

"No,"  he  answered,  so  simply  that  the 
most  impassioned  suspicion  must  have  been 
allayed  in  her,  who  saw  that  her  suspicion 
was  not  suspected.  "You  are  never  other 
wise  than  angelically  peaceful.  But — how 
very  slight  the  partition  walls  in  your  sum 
mer  hotels  seem  to  be!" 
78 


Miss   Bollard's   Inspiration 

"Was  that  what  you  were  going  to  say?" 

"  Not  at  all.  But  it  is  on  the  way  to  it.  I 
was  kept  awake  last  night  by  the  sound  of  a 
'regular  row'  in  the  room  next  mine." 

"  It  served  you  right — if  you  were  eaves 
dropping." 

"Oh,  but  I  wasn't.  That  was  the  odd 
part.  I  was  a  perfectly  helpless  ear-witness, 
as  one  might  call  it.  But  I  am  afraid  I  recog 
nized  their  voices  as  those  of  a  couple  who 
sat  at  table  with  me  at  supper.  The  hus 
band  seemed  to  be  interested  in  the  view  of 
Mr.  Crombie's  cottage,  which  he  had  had 
from  the  hotel  veranda,  and  asked  me  if  I 
knew  who  lived  there.  The  wife  manifested 
—what  shall  I  say? — such  an  ostentatious 
indifference  that  I  saw  she  was  curious 
too.  They  had  nothing  to  say  to  each 
other,  and  the  question  may  have  been 
merely  to  make  conversation  with  a  third 
person." 

"And  did  you  tell  them?" 
79 


Miss  Bellard's   Inspiration 

11 1  don't  know  why  I  didn't.  But  I  evaded 
the  question." 

"You  poor  thing!  It  must  have  been  a 
great  strain  on  you — any  sort  of  uncandor. 
Do  you  know,  Edmund,  I  think  your  candor 
is  the  nicest  thing  about  you?" 

" Really?     I  must  cultivate  it." 

"  No,  if  you  did  I  should  feel  that  I  had 
made  you  conscious,  and  I  could  never  for 
give  myself  for  that.  What  did  they  say  to 
each  other?" 

"Nothing." 

"But  when  they  kept  you  awake?" 

The  young  man  had  a  certain  hesitation. 
"Well,  I  don't  know!  Wasn't  it  rather  in 
the  nature  of  a  confidence?  An  involuntary 
confidence?" 

"Yes,  it  was,"  Lillias  admitted,  with  all 
her  frankness.  But  she  added,  with  a  cour 
age  which  fetched,  "Still,  if  we  are  one — or 
going  to  be — it  wouldn't  be  the  same  as  if 
you  spoke  of  it  to  another." 
80 


Miss   Bellard's   Inspiration 

"You  darling!"  Craybourne  started  up, 
all  his  length,  and  asked,  "May  I?'* 

"Well,"  she  said,  "if  you  will  be  very 
quick." 

He  ran  round  the  table,  and  after  he  had 
been  very  quick,  or  very  much  quicker  than 
he  wished,  he  sat  down,  all  his  length,  and 
asked,  "Where  was  I?" 

"On  the  point  of  telling  me  what  they 
said." 

"  It  appeared  to  be  principally  names. 
But  as  far  as  the  tenor  of  their  discourse  was 
coherent,  it  related  to  a  separation.  It  was 
mixed  up  with  a  good  deal  of  crying  from 
her." 

"Edmund!" 

"  Yes,  it  was  rather  touching,  in  that." 

"Doesn't  it  seem  incredible,"  Lillias 
mused,  "that  people  who  have  once  cared 
for  each  other  should  come  to  that?  I  can 
understand  death,  but  I  can't  understand 
divorce — between  husband  and  wife,  I  mean." 
81 


Miss  Bellard's   Inspiration 

"And  yet,  that's  where  it's  commonest," 
he  suggested,  without  apparent  sense  of  the 
joke. 

"  It  seems  to  be,"  she  agreed.  "  What  else 
did  they  say?" 

"The  rest  was  mainly  an  exchange  of  in 
sults." 

The  lovers  were  silent  for  a  little  space, 
and  then  she  asked,  "  Doesn't  it  seem  strange, 
that  just  in  this  supreme  moment,  when  we 
are  promising  our  lives  to  each  other,  and 
trying  to  join  them  in  the  sweetest  hopes, 
those  poor  people  should  be  so  near  us — in 
the  next  house,  in  the  next  room — tearing 
themselves  apart  in  the  darkest  despair  and 
the  bitterest  hate!  Do  you  think  there  is 
anything  ominous  in  it?" 

"  I  don't  see  why  there  should  be.  While 
I  heard  them  talking,  last  night,  of  course  I 
couldn't  help  thinking  of  ourselves.  But  our 
love  is  very  different,  Lillias.  It  isn't  found 
ed  on  any  mere  personal  fancy.  It  is  rea- 
82 


Miss  Bellard's  Inspiration 

soned  and  reasonable.  It  has  been  thought 
out  seriously  and  soberly  from  the  very  be 
ginning.  I  was  in  love  with  the  idea  of  you 
before  I  saw  you — with  the  girl  who  was  do 
ing  the  sort  of  thing  that  you  were  doing, 
and  must  be  the  sort  of  girl  you  were.  When 
I  saw  you,  I  saw  that  I  had  been  merely  ful 
filling  my  destiny." 

"You  said  that."  Lillias  paused  from 
this  beginning,  and  then  continued.  "  I  sup 
pose  there  was  some  other — attraction.  I'm 
free  to  say  there  was  with  me,  Edmund,"  she 
tenderly  entreated  him. 

"Oh,  there  was  with  me,  too — afterwards. 
So  much  so  that  at  times,  now,  I'm  afraid  I 
forget  the  original  motive,  altogether." 

"  Oh,  how  sweetly  you  say  it,"  she  beamed 
upon  him.  She  started  up  with  him,  and  he 
was  quicker  than  before  because  now  they 
met  half-way  of  the  table.  She  said,  in  a 
matter-of-fact  way,  "  I  suppose,  if  we're  going 
for  a  walk,  I  had  better  get  my  hat." 

83 


Miss   Bellard's   Inspiration 

"Oh,  certainly,  dearest.  And  I  will  get 
mine,  too." 

They  laughed  together  at  their  reciprocal 
imbecility,  and  once  more  he  was  very  quick ; 
or  rather  they  were  both  very  quick. 


VI 


(RS.  CROMBIE  went  into  Crom- 
bie's  library  to  receive  the  stran 
ger,  whose  card  was  coming  up 
for  her  husband,  an  hour  or  so 
after  Craybourne  and  Lillias  had  left  the 
house.  She  intercepted  the  card,  for  she  was 
just  going  in  to  see  why  Crombie  was  not 
getting  up,  even  for  the  belated  breakfast 
which  he  ordinarily  made.  He  said,  as  if  he 
needed  any  excuse  for  being  lazy,  that  he 
was  not  feeling  just  like  himself  that  morn 
ing,  and  he  thought  he  would  take  it  out  in 
bed  till  luncheon.  Then  he  should  be  fresher, 
and  more  equal  to  things.  He  did  not  say 
what  the  things  were  that  he  needed  being 
equal  to,  and  she  did  not  press  him  for  an  ex 
planation.  He  glanced  drowsily  at  the  card 

85 


Miss  Bollard's  Inspiration 

she  gave  him,  and  she  descended  to  the  li 
brary,  prepared  with  a  good  conscience  to 
say  to  the  stranger  that  Mr.  Crombie  had 
begged  her  to  see  him,  and  was  very  sorry 
not  to  be  well  enough  to  come  himself.  She 
added,  to  a  visible  preoccupation  of  the 
stranger's,  that  she  hoped  she  could  be  Mr. 
Crombie' s  substitute. 

"  Oh,  by  all  means,"  the  stranger  returned, 
standing  up  during  these  preliminaries,  and 
supporting  what  seemed  an  habitual  lame 
ness  on  the  stick  he  held  in  his  hand.  Mrs. 
Crombie  asked  him  to  sit  down,  and  she  was 
the  more  civil  to  him  in  her  tone  because  of  a 
certain  distinction  in  his  presence.  He  was 
very  well  set  up,  and  his  voice  was  well 
managed,  and  he  had  the  air  of  the  world 
which  we  all  prize  in  ourselves  and  others. 

"  I  don't  know  why  I  should  expect  Mr. 

Crombie  to  remember  me,  after  such  a  time," 

he  said,  looking  down  as  with  an  habitual 

glance  and  tapping  his  boot  with  his  stick, 

86 


Miss  Bellard's   Inspiration 

"but  when  I  made  out  that  it  was  actually 
he  who  was  living  here,  I  couldn't  resist 
dropping  over.  I'm  at  the  Saco  Shore 
House."  He  lifted  his  head.  "My  name 
is  Mevison;  Mr.  Cfombie  and  I  knew  each 
other  in  Paris." 

Mrs.  Crombie  started  dramatically.  "  Not 
Arthur  Mevison!  Of  Rene's  atelier?" 

"Yes." 

"Why,  Mr.  Crombie  did  nothing  but  talk 
of  you,  after  we  were  married,  for  years  and 
years!  I  used  to  perfectly  die  of  wonder 
that  we  never  saw  you;  I  saw  all  the  rest  of 
his  bachelor  friends,  and  he  always  said  that 
you  would  be  sure  to  turn  up.  But  you 
never  did.  I'm  so  glad!  I'll  rush  up  and 
tell  him  who  it  is;  I  don't  believe  he  really 
looked  at  your  card.  Why,  he'll  be  wild!" 
She  bolted  towards  the  door  with  an  agility 
impredicable  of  her  bulk,  but  something  in 
his  look  indefinitely  detained  her. 

"No,  don't  disturb  Crombie!     I  couldn't 

7  87 


Miss  Bellard's   Inspiration 

wait  till  he's  dressed — if  he's  still  in  bed. 
I  just  dropped  over.  We  shall  be  at  the 
hotel  some  days.  Perhaps  he'll  look  in 
on  me.  It's  quite  enough  for  the  present  to 
know  that  we're  so  near  each  other.  Don't!" 
There  was  such  a  note  of  pathos  in  his  en 
treaty  that  she  provisionally  forbore,  but 
as  much  in  curiosity  as  in  compassion,  and 
he  added,  "I'm  rather  glad  not  to  see  him 
this  morning;  he'll  know  how  to  account  for 
that,  if  he  remembers  me  as  well  as  I  remem 
ber  him.  Do  let  me  go,  and  come  back 
again !' ' 

"Will  you  come  back  soon?    To  lunch 
eon?"  she  parleyed. 

"Well — ah — perhaps  not  to  luncheon — " 
"I    beg   your    pardon!    Of   course    Mrs. 
Mevison  is  with  you.     I  will  go   over  and 
bring  her  back  with  me,  and  you  will  both 
stay  to  luncheon." 

"  I  don't  believe  Mrs.  Mevison — 
"  Well,  we  will  see!"  Mrs.  Crombie  cried,  in 
88 


Miss  Bellard's  Inspiration 

prepotent  hospitality.  "  I  know  the  table  at 
the  Saco  Shore,  and  how  glad  hotel-bound 
people  are  of  a  little  home  food,  if  you  put  it 
on  the  lowest  ground.  Have  they  made  you 
comfortable  as  to  rooms?" 

"  Oh,  I  think  so.  They've  done  their  best, 
I  dare  say.  Mrs.  Mevison  is  a  nervous  suf 
ferer,  and  sometimes  the  best  isn't  the  most 
she  could  ask;  but  it's  very  well;  the  rooms 
are  rather  high  up— 

"Nowr,  I'll  tell  you  what,  Mr.  Mevison," 
Mrs.  Crombie  broke  in  upon  him.  "We're 
not  going  to  let  you  stay  there.  We  are  go 
ing  to  have  you  here.  We  have  plenty  of 
rooms  that  are  mere  aching  voids  at  present, 
and  it  will  be  not  only  a  pleasure  but  a 
mercy.  This  place  is  my  doing,  and  Mr. 
Crombie  misses  the  society  we  used  to  have 
at  the  sea-shore,  and  is  always  more  or  less 
pining  for  people.  To  have  you,  of  all  peo 
ple — and  Mrs.  Mevison!  Can't  you  under 
stand?" 

89 


Miss  Bellard's   Inspiration 

"Dimly,"  Mr.  Mevison  returned.  "But 
the  thing  is  simply  impossible— 

"Not  till  Mrs.  Mevison  says  so,"  Mrs. 
Crombie  gayly  retorted.  "It  will  be 
such  a  surprise  for  Mr.  Crombie.  Now,  I 
won't  really  take  no  for  an  answer,  or  at 
least  any  no  but  your  wife's.  It  won't  be  the 
least  disturbance  to  us,  if  that's  what  you 
mean.  It  will  be  an  unmitigated  blessing. 
Don't  say  another  word.  The  thing  is  sim 
ply  settled." 

"No,  my  dear  Mrs.  Crombie,  it  isn't  set 
tled,"  he  protested,  with  a  solemnity  which 
in  another  mood  must  have  impressed  her. 
"It  can't  be— " 

But  she  took  this  for  a  polite  pretence,  and 
laughed  him  down,  in  saying,  "Well,  it  shall 
be  just  as  you  wish,  Mr.  Mevison.  Only,  I 
suppose  I  may  go  and  call  upon  Mrs.  Mevi 
son?" 

"Mrs.  Mevison  will  be  very  glad  to  see 
you,"  he  said,  gravely,  and  after  a  little 
90 


Miss  Bollard's  Inspiration 

more  hilarious  fatuity  of  hers  and  embar 
rassed  helplessness  of  his,  he  took  his  leave 
with  her  promise,  or  her  threat,  that  she 
would  bring  Crombie  with  her  to  call  upon 
Mrs.  Mevison. 

She  meant  to  keep  the  matter  a  secret  from 
Crombie,  and  to  have  an  agreeable  mystery 
for  him  in  making  him  go  to  the  inn,  to  call 
with  her  upon  some  old  friends  of  his  whom 
she  should  not  name ;  but  she  did  not  find  in 
herself  the  strength  for  this.  As  soon  as  Mr. 
Mevison  was  out  of  the  house,  she  pounded 
breathlessly  up-stairs  to  Crombie,  who  was 
still  drowsing,  in  a  vain  security  from  what 
was  about  to  happen,  and  called  out  to  him 
as  soon  as  she  opened  the  door,  "  Well,  now, 
Archibald,  who  do  you  think  has  been  here?" 

He  said,  of  course,  that  he  did  not  know, 
and  then  she  came  out  with  "  Arthur  Mevi 
son!" 

He  returned  sleepily,  sceptically,  con 
ditionally,  "What  Arthur  Mevison?" 


Miss  Bellard's   Inspiration 

"  Why,  your  Arthur  Mevison  that  you've 
always  told  me  about— Paris  Rene's  favor 
ite  pupil.  Surely  you're  not  going  to — " 

Crombie  sat  up  in  bed.  "  You  don't  mean 
to  tell  me  that  Arthur  Mevison —  I  thought 
he  was  dead!" 

"  He  isn't  dead  in  the  least.  He's  staying 
at  the  Saco  Shore  with  his  wife — " 

"  With  his  wife  ?" 

"  Yes ;  what  is  there  so  strange  about  that? 
Did  you  know  her?" 

"Oh  no." 

"What  do  you  know  about  her?  What 
have  you  ever  heard  of  her?" 

"Nothing  definite.  Only  that  she  was  a 
thundering  fool  of  some  sort." 

"Then  that  accounts  for  it.  Tell  me  all 
about  her,  before  you  go  one  inch  further, 
Archibald." 

"  I've  always  told  you  all  about  her.     How 
she  broke  him  up  as  soon  as  she  could,  and 
made  him  leave  off  painting,  and  tag  her 
92 


Miss   Bollard's    Inspiration 

round  the  world  everywhere,  and  wouldn't 
let  him  live  six  months  in  any  one  place,  and 
quarrelled  with  all  his  friends  and  enemies, 
and  led  him  a  dog's  life,  and  played  the  devil 
generally." 

"  You  never  told  me  one  word  of  the  kind." 

"Didn't  I?"  he  returned,  easily.  "I 
thought  I  did." 

"Not  one  word!  And  you  have  got  me 
into  an  awful  scrape." 

Crombie  lay  down  again,  and  pulled  the 
coverlet  to  his  chin,  as  if  he  could  take  the 
consequences  better  in  that  posture.  "  What 
have  you  done?" 

"  Done?  I  have  asked  them  to  come  and 
stay  with  us.  I  thought  it  would  be  such  a 
pleasant  surprise  for  you." 

"Why,  you  don't  mean  to  say  that  she's 
been  here  in  the  house  with  him?" 

"  Not  at  all !  But  I've  asked  him,  and  I've 
said  I  was  going  over  to  ask  her.  And  I  shall 
have  to  do  it." 

93 


Miss  Bellard's  Inspiration 

"Oh,  well!  Very  likely  there's  no  harm 
done.  But  I  thought  you  had  your  hands 
rather  full  with  Lillias  and  her  young  man, 
and  you  wouldn't  want  any  more  guests  just 
now.  Besides,  if  he  wants  to  come,  very 
likely  she  won't.  I've  understood  that  it 
usually  works  that  way  with  them."  He 
meant  not  only  the  Mevisons,  but  all  people 
in  the  like  case. 

"But  he  doesn't  want  to  come!  And  I 
wouldn't  take  no  for  an  answer.  I  insisted 
upon  going  and  asking  her." 

Crombie  puckered  his  mouth  to  a  long,  low 
whistle. 

"And  that  is  the  sort  of  scrape  you  have 
got  me  into,  my  dear.  How  often  have  I 
told  you  that  your  habit  of  supposing  you  had 
spoken  of  things  would  be  the  ruin  of  us  some 
day!" 

"  Oh,  well,"  Crombie  said  after  a  moment's 
reflection,  "perhaps  it  isn't  so  bad  as  I've 
heard.  It  was  some  talk  of  Minver's  at 
94 


Miss  Bellard's   Inspiration 

the  club  when  I  was  down  at  New  York 
last  winter.  He  said  she  had  spoiled  the 
most  promising  career  in  the  world.  Minver 
seemed  to  want  to  kill  her.  But  he's  an 
awful  tongue,  Minver  is.  Well,  it  can't  be 
helped  now." 

"  No,  it  can't  be  helped  now,"  Mrs.  Crom- 
bie  echoed.  "And  the  sooner  I  make  the 
plunge  the  better,"  she  added,  strenuously 
as  to  her  words,  but,  as  to  her  actions,  with 
the  effect  of  shivering  on  the  verge.  In 
order  to  gird  herself  up,  she  argued,  "  I  said 
luncheon,  and  I  suppose  I  ought  to  go  at 
once." 

"Yes,"  Crombie  assented  in  great  per 
sonal  comfort,  "  I  suppose  you  had.  / 
can't." 

His  wife  tacitly  examined  his  moral  armor 
for  some  crevice  at  which  to  pierce  him  with 
inculpation,  but  finding  it  proof  against  her 
she  could  only  say,  as  she  turned  to  sweep 
out  of  the  room,  "Well,  for  goodness'  sake, 
95 


Miss  Bollard's   Inspiration 

Archy,  do  be  up  to  receive  them  if  I  bring 
them  back  with  me!" 

"Oh,  that  will  be  all  right,"  he  answered 
cosily  from  the  depths  of  his  selfish  security ; 
but  by-and-by,  when  she  called  through  his 
closed  door  that  she  was  going,  he  stretched 
himself  in  bed  with  decision,  and  really  began 
to  push  off  the  blanket. 

Mrs.  Crombie,  as  she  issued  into  the  irreg 
ular  avenue  of  elms  that  formed  the  ap 
proach  to  her  cottage  from  the  river,  saw  a 
couple  advancing  towards  her.  In  the  dis 
tance  they  seemed  united  by  the  simple  de 
vice  of  the  man's  having  his  arm  round  the 
woman's  waist ;  as  they  came  nearer,  this  ap 
pearance  yielded  to  the  effect  of  her  having 
her  hand  through  his  arm;  and  by  the  time 
they  were  unmistakably  Lillias  and  Cray- 
bourne,  they  were  walking  less  and  less  close 
ly  together.  "  Upon  my  word,"  Mrs.  Crom 
bie  said  to  herself,  "  Lillias  is  going  it!"  But 
to  Lillias,  then  within  hail,  she  called,  "I'm 


Miss  Bollard's   Inspiration 

just  running  over  to  the  hotel,  to  see  some 
old  friends  of  your  uncle's.  I  shall  have  to 
leave  the  house  in  your  charge  while  I'm 
gone." 

"Well,  I  dare  say  I  can  get  Mr.  Cray- 
bourne  to  help  keep  the  robbers  away." 

"  I  guess  you'll  have  to.  Your  uncle 
isn't  up  yet.  It's  a  Mr.  Mevison  and  his 
wife,"  she  explained  at  random.  "  He  used 
to  be  in  Rene's  atelier  with  your  uncle, 
but  he  gave  it  up  after  he  was  mar 
ried.  She  wouldn't  let  him.  I  wonder  if 
Mr.  Craybourne  has  met  them  at  the  ho 
tel." 

"One  meets  a  great  many  people  at  the 
Saco  Shore  House,"  the  young  man  replied, 
not  wholly  able  to  keep  his  eyes  away  from 
Lillias's  waist. 

"  Do  you  suppose  it  could  have  been  the 
people,"  the  girl  asked  him,  "who  were  in 
quiring  about  aunty's  cottage?" 

A  look  of  alarm  came  into  the  dark  face  of 
97 


Miss  Bollard's   Inspiration 

the  young  man.  "  It's  possible.  I'm  sure  I 
can't  say." 

"  Well,  you'd  better,  if  they're  the  ones  you 
heard  conversing  so  violently  at  night." 

Craybourne  stood  looking  at  her  and  won 
dering  what  she  was  giving  him  away  for  in 
that  fashion.  She  explained  indirectly. 
"  Forewarned  is  forearmed,  Aunt  Hester.  I 
hope  it  isn't  the  couple  that  Mr.  Craybourne 
says  are  carrying  on  a  running  fight,  over 
there." 

" Horrors!"  Mrs.  Crombie  said.  "What 
does  she  mean?"  she  asked  the  young  man. 

"  Really,  it  can't  be  the  same.  I  was  tell 
ing  Miss  Bel — Lillias — of  a  family  jar  that  I 
had  been  rather  obliged  to  overhear  part  of 
last  night;  but  there's  no  reason  to  sup 
pose — " 

"He  means  there's  every  reason  to  sup 
pose,"  the  girl  put  in  mischievously. 

"I  see,"  Mrs.  Crombie  said,  "and  it  co 
incides  with  your  uncle's  view  of  her."  She 


Miss   Bellard's   Inspiration 

turned  from  Lillias  to  the  young  man.  "  Was 
it  very—" 

Craybourne  merely  looked  unhappy,  but 
Lillias  easily  answered  for  him:  "  They  didn't 
throw  things,  as  far  as  he  could  make  out, 
but  anything  short  of  that!" 

Mrs.  Crombie  remembered  the  dignity  she 
had  lost  sight  of  in  her  curiosity.  "  I  think 
there  is  some  mistake.  The  Mr.  and  Mrs. 
Mevison  I  am  speaking  of  are  middle-aged 
people,  and  I  have  asked  him  to  let  me  bring 
them  over  to  stay  with  us.  They  are  not 
very  comfortable  at  the  hotel." 

"  It  seems  to  be  rather  full,"  Craybourne 
vaguely  assented. 

In  the  presence  of  a  calamity  on  which 
Mrs.  Crombie  put  so  bold  a  face,  the  girl  was 
sobered.  "  I've  no  idea  they  are  the  same 
people,  aunty."  Then  she  gave  way  again 
to  the  spirit  of  mischief  which  her  happiness 
seemed  to  have  awakened  in  her.  "  But  if 
they  do  happen  to  be,  it's  the  very  contrast 
99 


Miss  Bellard's   Inspiration 

you  want,  to  us.  If  you  don't  get  somebody 
of  that  kind  into  the  house,  I  don't  see  how 
you  are  going  to  live  through  us.  We're  bad 
enough  now,  but  we're  going  to  be  worse. 
At  least,  Mr.  Craybourne  is." 

She  looked  teasingly  from  her  aunt  to  her 
lover,  and  it  seemed  as  if  he  were  not  able  to 
gainsay  her ;  as  if  he  had  no  wish  to  do  so ;  as 
if  what  she  said  was  final  wisdom  as  well  as 
primal  love.  He  was  a  sight  to  make  an 
other  man  sick,  but  his  aspect  filled  Mrs. 
Crombie  with  reverence.  She  was  not  a 
ready  or  epigrammatical  woman,  but  she  had 
the  inspiration  of  answering,  "  I  should  be 
willing  to  take  my  chances  with  you  two 
alone." 

"Oh,  poor  aunty!"  the  girl  cried,  with  a 
laugh,  in  which  they  all  senselessly  joined. 

Mrs.  Crombie  moved  on  towards  the  ferry, 

and  the  young  people  towards  the  house. 

She  had  met  them  midway  of  the  avenue, 

and  at  its  foot  Mrs.   Crombie  turned  and 

100 


Miss  Bellard's   Inspiration 

looked  back  towards  them  at  its  head ;  they 
were  turning,  too,  as  well  as  they  could,  and 
she  perceived  that  she  had  lost  the  inter 
mediate  step  towards  the  closer  union  which 
had  been  represented  before  by  Lillias's  hav 
ing  her  hand  through  Craybourne's  arm. 


VII 


IRS.  MEVISON  received  Mrs. 
Crombie  in  her  husband's  pres 
ence,  with  the  prompt  and  pe 
culiar  smile  with  which  ladies 
know  how  to  condone  men's  clumsy  blunders. 
He  was  getting  lamely  up  from  his  newspaper 
to  introduce  the  two  women,  when  his  wife 
came  gracefully  forward  with  outstretched 
hand,  saying,  in  a  sort  of  tender  warble, "  Mrs. 
Crombie?"  She  had  certainly  a  very  win 
ning  voice,  and  her  manner  was  perfection; 
if  it  had  been  less  perfect,  perhaps  it  might 
have  been  better. 

"Arthur,"  she  cried  to  her  husband,  "do 

get  Mrs.  Crombie  a  chair,  and  let  us  all  sit 

down  on  the  veranda  here.     The  best  part 

of  these  summer  hotels  is  the  outside,  don't 

102 


Miss   Bellard's   Inspiration 

you  think?  I  was  sure  you  would  come, 
when  Arthur  told  me  he  had  been  to  look  you 
up,  though  he  always  keeps  such  things  as  a 
little  surprise  for  me." 

Mrs.  Mevison  was  bending  and  smiling,  and 
sweeping  herself  into  a  chair  after  Mrs.  Crom- 
bie  was  seated,  and  wanting  to  give  her  a  fan 
or  take  something  from  her,  or  make  her  have 
an  easier  seat,  and  ignoring  her  excuses  for 
Crombie's  failure  to  come,  too,  with  an  angelic 
amiability  which  deceived  neither  of  them. 
They  both  knew  that  Mevison  had  said  noth 
ing  to  his  wife  about  the  Crombies'  coming, 
and  they  understood  that  Mrs.  Mevison  was 
now  taking  it  out  of  him  for  his  failure  to  do 
so.  He  cast  a  certain  look  upon  Mrs.  Crom- 
bie,  as  if  he  would  say:  "  Now,  here  is  your 
chance  to  back  out  of  your  hospitality.  I 
haven't  said  anything  about  it,  and  you 
needn't." 

Mrs.  Crombie  was  above  any  such  mean 
ness.  " Men  are  so  forgetful!"  she  joined 

s  103 


Miss  Bellard's  Inspiration 

Mrs.  Mevison  in  politely  assuming.  Then, 
for  this  would  not  quite  do,  she  said,  "  They 
seem  to  have  a  passion  for  surprises,  and  are 
always  keeping  things  back  to  spring  them 
on  you." 

"  Mr.  Mevison,"  his  wife  said,  with  an  arch 
glance  at  him  which  did  not  disperse  the 
kind  of  darkness  involving  him,  "likes  to 
keep  them  back  without  springing  them  on 
you."  She  continued  to  look  tenderly  across 
her  shoulder  at  him  while  Mrs.  Crombie  went 
on,  but  her  jaw  was  set. 

"Well,  I  hope  you  won't  find  this  surprise 
too  formidable.  It's  merely  that  I  want  you 
to  come  over  and  stay  with  us  as  long  as  you 
meant  to  stay  at  the  hotel,  and  as  much 
longer  as  we  can  make  you.  And  I  won't 
take  no  for  answer!" 

"What  do  you  say,  dearest?"  Mrs.  Mevi 
son  asked,  with  melting  meekness,  in  refer 
ring  the  question  to  her  husband.  Then  she 
referred  his  attitude  ironically  to  Mrs.  Crom- 
104 


Miss  Bellard's   Inspiration 

bie.  "  You  see  what  a  tyrant  I  have !  I  can't 
say  my  soul's  my  own  in  these  matters!" 
she  concluded  gayly. 

Mevison  ignored  her  in  replying  to  Mrs. 
Crombie:  "I  really  couldn't  think  of  our 
crowding  in  upon  you.  We're  very  com 
fortable  here,  though  that  has  nothing  to  do 
with  it;  and  it  wouldn't  be  fair  to  sacrifice 
you  to  my  old  friendship  with  Crombie — " 

Mrs.  Crombie  would  have  lifted  her  voice 
in  protest ;  she  had  indeed  got  it  incoherently 
up,  when  Mrs.  Mevison  cut  in  under  it  with 
a  warble  of  the  sweetest  caressingness : "  Now, 
dearest !  I  must,  just  for  once,  put  in  my  little 
plea!  I  don't  think  it  at  all  nice  for  you  to 
say  it's  quite  comfortable  here  as  a  reason 
for  refusing  Mrs.  Crombie' s  kindness— 

"  I  admitted  something  like  that,"  he 
growled,  without  looking  at  her. 

She  patted  the  air  towards  him  with  a 
small,  glittering,  jewelled  hand.    "  Now,  now, 
now!     You  know   I'm  not  criticising  you, 
105 


Miss  Bellard's   Inspiration 

love.  I  simply  can't  have  Mrs.  Crombie 
misunderstand  you.  I  must  have  her  know 
that  it's  merely  your  delicacy,  and  that  you're 
dying  to  be  with  your  old  friend,  for  those 
long,  late  talks  that  men  can  have  only  when 
they've  risen  from  the  same  table  and  are  go 
ing  to  bed  under  the  same  roof.  You  must 
own,  now,  that  I  couldn't  keep  you  from 
rushing  over  to  Mr.  Crombie' s  as  soon  as  you 
had  breakfast  this  morning,  and  that  you're 
just  dying  to  accept  Mrs.  Crombie's  invita 
tion."  She  turned  vividly  to  Mrs.  Crombie. 
11  That's  the  true  version,  Mrs.  Crombie,  and 
I'm  going  to  accept  for  him."  She  warbled 
down  the  disclaimer  that  he  tried  to  make. 
"  We  will  be  in  good  time  for  luncheon — half- 
past  one?  No,  one! — and  I  will  see  to  hav 
ing  our  things  sent  over  later  in  the  day ;  you 
needn't  trouble  about  them !  And  Mr.  Mevi- 
son  won't,  either!  He's  all  a  man  when  it 
comes  to  packing,  though  he  doesn't  always 
have  the  courage  of  his  preferences." 
106 


Miss  Bollard's   Inspiration 

She  laughed  to  Mrs.  Crombie  at  the  dis 
comfiture  and  confusion  in  his  face,  and  Mrs. 
Crombie,  presently  getting  up  to  go,  with 
some  polite  fatuities  about  being  so  glad  they 
could  come,  and  all  that,  Mrs.  Mevison  rose 
too,  of  course,  and  went  over  to  her  husband 
where  he  had  risen,  and  grouped  herself  af 
fectionately  with  him,  laying  her  pretty  hand 
on  his  arm,  which,  while  Mrs.  Crombie  still 
admired,  twitched  itself  from  her  as  with  a 
nervous  impatience. 

They  followed  Mrs.  Crombie  down  to  the 
foot  of  the  veranda  stairs  in  her  going,  and 
there  repeated  their  leave  of  her.  Then  Mrs. 
Mevison  tripped  girlishly  up  the  stairs,  and 
with  a  gay  cry  of  laughter  ran  back  into  the 
hotel  before  her  husband. 

Mrs.  Crombie  walked  very  soberly  home, 
and,  as  the  sum  of  her  reflections,  said  to  her 
husband,  whom  she  met  in  the  avenue,  going 
over  at  last  to  do  the  decencies  in  calling  upon 
his  friend:  "Well,  Archibald,  I  can't  make 
107 


Miss  Bollard's   Inspiration 

her  out,  and  I  don't  believe  you  can.  But 
you  needn't  go,  now.  They've  accepted,  or 
she  has,  and  they'll  be  to  lunch.  I'm  afraid 
we're  in  for  something  awful." 

He  turned  with  her.  "  Why,  what  makes 
you  think  so?" 

"Well,  she  may  be  thundering,  but  she's 
no  fool." 

"What  makes  you  think  that?" 

"  I  couldn't  begin  to  tell  you.  We'd  better 
wait  and  see  if  you  can  see.  I  don't  want 
to  prejudice  you  against  her." 

"Apparently  not." 

"  But  this  I  will  say:  she's  either  the  most 
consummate  actress,  or  the  fondest  wife,  or 
the  most  perfect  little  fiend  that  I  ever  did 


see." 


"Come!  That's  something  like  impartial 
treatment.  She  couldn't  be  all  three?" 

"She  might.  But  didn't  you  always  tell 
me  that  Mevison  was  a  man  of  the  greatest 


courage?" 


1 08 


Miss  Bollard's   Inspiration 

"  He  was  the  cock  of  the  atelier.  Was  go 
ing  to  fight  a  duel  with  one  of  the  French 
men,  and  cowed  the  fellow  out  by  his  choice 
of  revolvers  for  weapons.  He  confessed  that 
he  couldn't  have  hit  the  side  of  a  barn,  after 
wards." 

"  That  is  what  I  always  understood.  Well !' ' 

"  Do  you  mean  that  Mrs.  Mevison  has 
taken  the  pluck  out  of  him?" 

"  Not  that.  But  she  has  bewildered  him. 
She  does  what  she  pleases  with  him,  because 
he  can't  follow  her.  Archibald,  I  never  saw 
a  man  that  I  liked  so  much ! — except  you,  of 
course!" 

"  Thank  you.  I  dare  say  he  has  his  faults. 
He  used  to  have  them;  perhaps  Mrs.  Mevi 
son  has  reformed  him.  But  I  notice  that  a 
woman  always  attributes  the  fault  in  these 
cases  to  the  wife,  unless  the  case  happens  to 
be  her  own.  What  did  you  see  or  hear  that 
made  you  suspect  Mrs.  Mevison  of  not  being 
a  saint  upon  earth?" 

109 


Miss   Beflard's    Inspiration 

"  Well,  everything  that  I  heard  was  in  her 
favor.  He  seemed  very  sulky,  though  he 
was  perfectly  polite  to  me;  and  perhaps  I  only 
fancied  what  I  saw." 

"What  was  it?" 

"  She  laid  her  hand  on  his  arm,  when  we  all 
got  up,  and  smoothed  it,  and  suddenly  he 
twitched  away,  as  if  something  had  stung 
him." 

"You  mean,  she  pinched  him?" 

"  I  can't  be  sure  that  she  did." 

"And  it's  that  sort  of  calamity  you've 
asked  into  our  house!  Perhaps  it  would 
have  been  as  well  to  wait  and  make  Mrs. 
Mevison's  acquaintance." 

"I  did  it  for  your  sake.  I  thought 
you  would  like  to  have  your  old  friend 
here." 

"  I  know  you  did,  and  I  don't  blame  you. 
Well,  it  will  be  rather  interesting.  It  will 
be  a  show.  Poor  old  Mevison!" 

"  Yes,  my  heart  aches  for  him.    Archibald, 
no 


Miss  Bellard's   Inspiration 

do  you  suppose  there  is  much  of  that  kind  of 
misery  in  the  world?" 

"Lots." 

"Then  marriage  is  a  failure!" 

"In  those  instances.  It  all  comes  from 
their  expecting  too  much  of  it.  I  still  in 
cline  to  the  theory  that  Mrs.  Mevison  is  a 
thundering  fool.  Well,  it  will  be  a  good  ob 
ject-lesson  for  Lillias  and  her  love.  It  will 
teach  them  to  go  slow  in  their  demands  upon 
each  other.  I  always  heard  that  the  Mevi- 
sons  were  furiously  in  love ;  and  she  seems  to 
be  in  love  yet." 

"  Do  you  call  pinching  love?" 

"It's  one  form  of  it.  It's  the  hating  and 
hurting  form." 

"  Now,  Archibald,  you  are  beginning  to  be 
disgusting  again." 


VIII 

fRS.  MEVISON  made  the  lunch 
eon  go  off  so  nicely  that  Crombie, 
at  least,  began  to  think  his  wife's 
eyes  must  have  deceived  her,  and 
there  could  have  been  no  pinching  or  baffling 
or  bewildering  on  the  part  of  such  a  woman 
as  she  showed  herself.  She  deferred  to  Mev- 
ison  in  everything;  when  there  was  nothing 
to  defer  to  him  in,  she  invented  things.  She 
made  Crombie  tell  her  all  about  Mevison's 
life  and  his  in  Rene's  atelier;  she  confessed 
that  she  was  jealous  of  everybody  who  had 
known  her  husband  before  she  had,  and  she 
said  that  if  Rene  had  taken  girl  pupils,  she 
did  not  know  what  she  should  do,  so  inti 
mately  as  art  students  were  thrown  to 
gether. 

112 


Miss  Bellard's   Inspiration 

"  Oh,  but  he  did,"  Crombie  said. 

"He  did?  Why,  dearest,"  she  turned  to 
her  husband,  "  didn't  you  always  tell  me  that 
Rene  didn't  take  girl  pupils?" 

"No,"  Mevison  answered,  briefly. 

"  How  very  strange!  I  must  have  dream 
ed  it.  I  knew  that  I  couldn't  bear  it  if  it  was 
so,  and  so  I  simply  dreamed  it  wasn't." 

She  took  the  able-minded  Lillias  and  her 
lover  into  her  especial  favor,  though  she  ex 
tended  her  favor  to  the  whole  household,  and 
there  was  not  a  servant  whom  she  came  in 
contact  with  whose  heart  she  did  not  make 
it  her  business  to  win.  Mrs.  Crombie  had 
acquainted  her  at  once  with  the  absorbing 
psychological  situation  which  Lillias  and 
Craybourne  embodied,  and  extracted  from 
her  a  warble  that  was  also  a  crow  of  sympa 
thetic  exultation.  "Oh,  how  perfectly  dear! 
It's  just  as  if  it  had  been  planned  for  us. 
Lovers!  Arthur  and  I  have  never  ceased  to 
be  lovers.  And  to  think  that  it  should  be 
"3 


Miss  Bollard's   Inspiration 

that  delightful  young  Englishman  who  has 
been  sitting  at  our  table  at  the  inn !  I  must 
tell  Arthur?  May  I?" 

She  frankly  possessed  herself  of  Cray- 
bourne  at  once,  and  by  her  brave  uncon 
sciousness  defied  him  beyond  his  powers  to 
think  evil  of  anything  he  had  seen  of  her ;  as 
to  what  he  had  heard  he  began  to  doubt  that 
too.  While  she  captured  Craybourne  with 
one  hand,  she  playfully  threatened  Lillias 
with  the  other.  "Don't  you  turn  those 
pretty  eyes  of  yours  on  my  husband,  Miss 
Bellard!  I  won't  have  it!  The  poor  fellow 
couldn't  stand  their  fire  a  half -minute  if  I 
were  not  here ;  or  if  Mr.  Craybourne  wasn't ; 
he'll  help  me  save  him." 

She  treated  Lillias  alternately  as  a  chit 
and  as  a  veteran  worldling  who  knew  it 
all,  and  whom  nothing  need  be  kept  from. 
During  the  whole  of  the  first  day  she  pre 
tended  that  the  girl  was  Crombie's  niece,  and 
insinuated  a  subtile  and  delicate  compassion 
114 


Miss  Bellard's   Inspiration 

for  Mrs.  Crombie  in  having  the  burden  of  her 
affair  in  the  house,  together  with  the  responsi 
bility.  When  she  consented  to  understand 
that  Lillias  was  the  daughter  of  Mrs.  Crom- 
bie's  sister,  nothing  could  exceed  the  pleas 
ure  she  had  in  Crombie 's  good  nature  and 
her  sympathy  with  Mrs.  Crombie 's  sense  of  it. 
One  did  so  hate  to  ask  things  of  one's  hus 
band!  She  had  made  it  a  principle  to  die 
before  letting  Arthur  do  anything  for  her 
that  she  could  possibly  help.  She  was  struck 
with  fresh  wonder  at  Lillias :  her  remarkable 
beauty,  which  was  so  different  from  the  or 
dinary  beauty ;  her  grace,  which  was  as  wholly 
her  own  as  if  she  had  invented  the  idea  of 
grace ;  her  brilliancy,  which  was  so  unlike  the 
brilliancy  of  girls  who  were  thought  brilliant 
in  the  usual  acceptation  of  the  term.  She 
said  that  Mrs.  Crombie  must  tell  her  all  about 
Lillias,  and  she  made  her  tell  her  at  least  all 
she  wished  to  know  of  the  girl's  strange  ca 
reer,  her  odd  notions  of  independence,  how 


Miss  Bellard's   Inspiration 

and  where  she  met  Mr.  Craybourne,  and  what 
his  credentials  were,  and  how  utterly  de 
voted  they  were  to  each  other.  She  said 
that  very  few  Americans  would  have  fallen 
in  love  with  a  girl  under  such  very  peculiar 
circumstances;  it  was  only  an  Englishman 
who  could  do  it,  and  everybody  that  knew 
said  that  Englishmen  made  the  best  of  lovers 
and  the  worst  of  husbands. 

By  this  time  Crombie  wanted  to  put  her 
out  of  the  house,  to  throw  her  into  the  Saco ; 
and  his  fury  gratified  Mrs.  Crombie  as  a 
generous  tribute  to  her  niece.  "  I  don't 
like  her  any  more  than  you  do,  Archibald," 
she  said,  "but  she  interests  me,  and  you 
needn't  feel  anxious  about  Lillias.  She  can 
be  trusted  to  take  care  of  herself,  when  she 
gets  round  to  it,  as  the  country  people 
say.  It's  very  sweet  of  you  to  think  of 
her,  but  you  mustn't,  dearest,  though  I  ap 
preciate  it.  Everything  is  going  swimming 
ly.  I've  given  you  and  Mr.  Mevison  a  chance 
116 


Miss   Bellard's   Inspiration 

to  bring  up  your  arrears  of  talk,  and  I  don't 
believe  they'll  stay  long.  I  noticed  this 
morning  when  I  was  in  her  room  that  she  had 
hardly  hung  up  a  thing;  there's  one  of  her 
trunks  that  she  hasn't  even  unlocked.  So 
you  needn't  worry,  you  poor  thing!" 

She  put  her  hand  on  the  gloved  hand  of 
Crombie,  in  which  he  held  the  reins  of  the 
horse  he  was  driving  on  an  excursion  stolen 
from  their  guests.  She  had  done  her  duty 
in  proposing  a  buckboard  that  they  could  all 
six  have  driven  in ;  when  Lillias  declined  that, 
and  urged  Mr.  Craybourne  to  go,  Mrs.  Crom 
bie  devolved  upon  a  carryall  for  four,  but  so 
forbiddingly  that  Mrs.  Mevison  laughed  at 
the  notion  of  Mevison  and  herself  foisting 
themselves  upon  their  hosts  for  the  only 
relief  they  could  have  from  their  hospitali 
ties.  She  said  she  would  make  Arthur  take 
her  a  walk ;  it  was  a  pity  his  lameness  would 
not  let  him  do  any  mountain -climbing ;  the 
mountain-climbing  there  must  be  so  easy. 
117 


Miss  Bellard's   Inspiration 

She  must  get  Mr.  Craybourne  and  Lillias  to 
take  her  with  them  some  time ;  she  doted  on 
mountain -climbing. 

Lillias  said,  gravely,  perhaps  Mr.  Cray- 
bourne  would  take  her  now;  she  would  stay 
and  see  that  Mr.  Mevison  came  to  no  harm 
while  they  were  gone ;  but  after  an  infinitesi 
mal  moment  in  which  Craybourne  manifested 
a  perdurable  resolution  not  to  take  Mrs.  Mev 
ison  mountain  -  climbing,  she  warbled  back, 
Oh  no !  She  could  never  leave  Mr.  Mevison 
alone  while  she  was  enjoying  herself;  and  she 
warned  Lillias  against  the  insidious  effect  of 
giving  way  to  the  emotions,  which  was  al 
ways  in  danger  of  becoming  such  a  fixed 
habit  that  you  had  no  peace  of  your 
life. 

For  these  reasons  the  Crombies  found 
themselves  driving  alone,  and  quit  of  the 
sight  of  all  their  guests  until,  on  the  home 
stretch,  they  arrived  at  a  mowing-piece  not 
far  from  their  cottage,  but  secluded  from  the 
118 


Miss  Bellard's  Inspiration 

sight  of  it.  There  they  saw  the  Mevisons 
walking  together  at  the  farther  side  of  the 
meadow,  and  well  beyond  hearing  of  their 
wheels.  He  had  his  hands  folded  on  his  stick 
behind  him,  and  was  limping  along  between 
the  hay -cocks  which  dotted  the  smoothly 
cropped  stubble,  while  she  playfully  came 
and  went,  dropping  after  him,  and  then 
passing  ahead  of  him,  apparently  saying 
something  to  him,  and  either  laughing  or 
crying,  they  could  not  make  out  which. 
Suddenly,  she  gave  a  scream  of  unmistakable 
rage,  with  a  sort  of  rush  at  him;  then  he 
was  gripping  her  wrists  and  vividly  expos 
tulating  with  her. 

"Oh,  Archibald!"  Mrs.  Crombie  wailed: 
"  Do  you,  can  you,  believe  she  meant  to — " 

"Not  a  doubt  of  it!"  In  his  transport, 
Crombie  gave  a  cut  of  the  whip  to  the  horse, 
which,  after  a  moment  of  astonishment  at 
treatment  so  unprecedented,  bolted  into  a 
short  trot  that  carried  them  temporarily 
119 


Miss  Bollard's   Inspiration 

past  the  belligerents.  As  soon  as  the  horse 
slowed  up,  Crombie  looked  back  round  the 
side  of  his  buggy. 

"Can  you  see  them?"  his  wife  palpi 
tated. 

"Yes,  and  she's  walking  beside  him  as 
peaceably  as  a  lamb.  Well,  upon  my  soul, 
if  she  isn't  waving  her  handkerchief  to 
me!" 

"Then,"  his  wife  commanded,  "take  off 
your  hat  and  bow,  so  that  she'll  think  we 
haven't  seen  them.  Smile!" 

"Not  much!"  Crombie  said,  grimly,  with 
out  doing  either,  and  this  forced  his  wife,  at 
great  personal  inconvenience,  to  get  up  and 
wave  her  handkerchief  over  the  top  of  the 
buggy. 

At  dinner,  Mrs.  Mevison  came  radiantly 
down,  warbling  out  as  she  took  her  place 
rather  belatedly,  "  Such  a  game  of  romps  as 
Arthur  and  I  had  in  your  hay-field,  Mr. 
Crombie!  You  wouldn't  think,  with  his 
120 


Miss  Bellard's  Inspiration 

lameness,  how  quick  he  is.     I  hope  we  didn't 
spoil  the  hay." 

"Oh,"  Crombie  said,  "if  you  were  having 
fun,  I  don't  mind  the  hay." 


Crombies  decided  that  in  the 
interest  of  young  love  they  would 
keep  what  they  had  seen  in  the 
^mowing-piece  from  Lillias  and 
Craybourne.  It  was  not  that  the  girl  was 
so  ignorant  of  life  as  not  to  know  that  hus 
bands  and  wives  have  their  little  tiffs,  but  a 
convention  of  the  kind  that  forbids  elders 
recognizing  the  knowledge  of  children  con 
cerning  all  sorts  of  things  constrained  them 
to  the  pretence  that  marriage  is  an  indefinite 
continuation  of  love's  young  dream.  Cray- 
bourne,  indeed,  might  be  supposed  acquaint 
ed  with  darkling  things  about  life  outside 
of  matrimony,  but  he  could  not  decently 
be  imagined  privy  to  the  fact  that  people 
joined  in  wedlock  ever  chafed  in  their  bonds. 

122 


Miss   Bollard's   Inspiration 

Lillias,  in  her  preparation  for  the  stage,  must 
have  come  so  well  in  sight  of  the  theatre  as 
to  have  learned  that  there  were  such  things 
as  quarrels  and  separations  among  actors ;  but 
unless  she  recurred  to  her  experience  with 
her  own  father  and  mother  she  must  have 
believed  that  such  casualties  were  incidents 
solely  of  the  histrionic  temperament  and 
profession.  In  spite  of  her  frank  recogni 
tion  to  her  aunt  of  the  situation  which 
Craybourne  had  noted  at  the  hotel,  and 
had  apparently  talked  over  with  her,  the 
Crombies  felt  sacredly  bound  not  to  let  her 
suspect  it. 

Crombie  felt  himself  the  more  strictly  en 
joined  to  reticence  from  the  girl  by  the  en 
largement  of  his  own  knowledge  a  few  nights 
later.  It  came  in  the  form  of  a  confidence 
from  Mevison  as  they  sat  smoking  late  on 
the  veranda,  watching  the  planets  over  the 
fiery  points  of  their  cigars  and  fighting  the 
occasional  mosquitoes  which  came  just  often 
123 


Miss  Bellard's   Inspiration 

enough  to  bear  Crombie  out  in  saying  that 
they  had  no  mosquitoes  to  speak  of.  It  be 
gan  with  the  voluntary  confession  that  Mev- 
ison  made  of  his  not  having  slept  very  well 
the  night  before. 

"What  was  the  matter?"  Crombie  grunted 
comfortably  through  his  smoke.  "Bed  bad  ?" 

"No,  the  fault  was  with  the  man  in  it. 
I've  got  the  trick  of  not  sleeping  very  well." 

"  I  remember  when  you  couldn't  be  kept 
awake." 

"Oh,"  Mevison  laughed,  forlornly,  "I 
didn't  have  the  right  one  to  keep  me  awake, 
then."  He  piteously  burst  out:  "  For  God's 
sake,  Crombie,  don't  pretend  you  don't  see 
how  it  is  with  my  wife  and  me!" 

"No,  I  won't,  Mevison,"  his  friend  re 
turned,  kindly.  "Do  you  want  me  to  ask 
you  what  the  trouble  is?" 

"Oh,  the  usual  trouble:  incompatibility. 
We're  fighting  to  a  separation.  I  didn't  want 
it  to  go  to  the  extreme — to  a  divorce;  but 
124 


Miss  Bollard's   Inspiration 

I'm  resigned  to  that  now,  because  I  see  we 
are  impossible  to  each  other.  I've  seen  it 
for  years;  I've  seen  it  from  the  first." 

"Yes,"  Crombie  said,  feeling  that  Mevi- 
son  wished  to  be  prompted. 

"  It  isn't  that  we  don't  love  each  other,  or 
that  we  haven't.  We've  always  loved  each 
other  too  much.  I  won't  brag  of  my  part, 
but  I  know  that  when  she's  been  the  most 
impossible  she's  been  the  most  devoted  to 
me.  She  cared  for  me  so  entirely  that  she 
could  not  bear  that  anybody — no!  any  thing 
— else  should  have  the  least  part  of  me.  You 
used  to  believe  I  could  paint?  Or  could 
have  painted  if  I  had  kept  on?" 

"  You  could  have  been  a  great  painter." 

"  Perhaps.  But  she  broke  it  up.  It 
wasn't  merely  that  the  models  drove  her 
mad.  I  could  excuse  her  for  that;  I  think 
it's  pretty  hard  for  an  artist's  wife  to  bear, 
and  I've  come  to  think  it's  an  unhallowed 
thing  for  a  man  to  keep  looking  at  a  woman's 
125 


Miss   Bollard's   Inspiration 

nakedness  and  putting  her  beauty  down  in 
color.  But  when  I  left  off  working  from 
models,  and  took  to  chicquing  it — did  the 
ideal  business — it  was  just  as  bad.  Then 
I  found  out  that  it  was  the  painting  itself 
which  she  felt  between  us.  If  there  had  been 
a  necessity  for  my  working,  if  there  had  been 
poverty,  I  might  have  gone  on ;  I  should  have 
had  to.  But  there  was  money,  plenty  of  it — 
hers.  So  I  left  off,  for  peace'  sake,  thinking 
I  could  begin  again  some  time ;  and  we  began 
to  drift.  We've  been  round  the  world  half 
a  dozen  times;  we've  lived  in  twenty  coun 
tries;  but  we  always  had  ourselves  with  us. 
She  wasn't  jealous,  or  at  least  not  of  women 
more  than  of  men.  But  she  felt  that  I  was 
all  hers,  and  that  she  had  a  right  to  every 
atom,  every  instant  of  me.  If  I  made  a 
friend,  she  broke  up  the  friendship.  Not  in 
any  public  way — I  must  say  she  always 
managed  skilfully  at  first,  though  of  late  she's 
been  growing  reckless.  But  it  was  slavery." 
126 


Miss  Bollard's   Inspiration 

"I  see,"  Crombie  assented,  but  very  gin 
gerly,  so  as  not  to  interrupt  Mevison. 

"Still,"  he  went  on,  "I  was  not  the  only 
sufferer.  Slavery  was  always  worse  for  the 
owner  than  the  slave.  I  know  it  hurt  her 
worse  than  it  hurt  me;  that  it  was  anguish 
for  her  to  make  me  miserable,  as  she  had 
to  do,  because  she  loved  me,  in  her  way  so 
much.  It  caused  her  pain  and  shame  and 
sorrow  twice  as  much  as  it  caused  me.  She 
knew  that  she  spoiled  my  life,  and  that 
whether  I  was  aware  of  it  or  not,  at  the 
bottom  of  my  soul  I  longed  to  be  rid  of 
her;  to  break  my  chain,  to  pull  my  neck 
out  of  the  halter  at  any  cost.  The  con 
viction  grew  upon  her,  and  goaded  her,  till 
she  had  to  accuse  me  of  it.  I  knew  the 
truth  first  from  her;  and  the  time  came 
when  I  couldn't  deny  it;  though  I  denied  it 
at  first  a  thousand  times,  I  had  to  own  it  at 
last.  That  made  things  intolerable.  What 
she  could  bear,  so  long  as  I  denied  it,  she 
127 


Miss  Bollard's  Inspiration 

could  not  bear  when  I  owned  it,  though  she 
had  divined  it  herself,  and  brought  me  to  the 
sense  of  it.  What  is  the  use  of  making  a 
short  story  long?  She  sees  as  well  as  I  do 
that  we  must  part ;  but  it  is  her  helpless  fate 
to  torment  me  more  and  more  into  what  if 
we  could  we  would  both  avoid." 

"  I  think  I  can  understand,"  Crombie  said, 
modestly  enough,  for  subtleties  like  these 
were  not  his  strong  point.  He  had  a  notion 
of  suggesting  that  something  might  be  done, 
but  upon  the  whole  he  felt  that  nothing  had 
better  be  done,  even  if  it  could,  and  that  the 
most  that  could  be  hoped  or  asked  for  these 
miserable  people  was  a  separation  for  time, 
if  not  for  eternity. 

"  I  don't  mean  to  say,"  Mevison  continued, 
getting  up  and  throwing  the  stump  of  his 
cigar  over  the  veranda  rail,  "that  I  haven't 
been  to  blame.  But  the  accurate  way  of 
putting  it  would  be  to  say  that  neither  of 
us  is  to  blame.  We  were  simply  born  not  to 
128 


Miss  Bellard's   Inspiration 

be  mated,  and  we  have  been  mated.     That's 
all." 

Crombie  had  his  own  opinion  as  to  the 
totality.  In  his  heart  he  did  not  the  least 
blame  his  friend,  and  he  did  blame  Mrs.  Mev- 
ison.  He  was  in  the  presence  of  his  friend's 
quivering  anguish,  his  humiliation  and  de 
spair,  and  he  did  not  believe  the  woman  who 
caused  it  could  share  it  in  the  measure  that 
Mevison  believed.  He  would  have  liked  to 
say  something  of  the  sort,  but  besides  being 
a  little  insecure  of  his  phrasing,  he  was  un 
certain  how  Mevison  might  take  it.  The 
next  thing  was  to  sympathize  with  Mevison 
about  his  not  sleeping.  "  Did  you  ever  try 
Scotch  whiskey  for  your  insomnia?  I  find 
that  sets  me  off  about  as  quick  as  any 
thing." 

"I  don't  know,"  Mevison  hesitated.     "I 

think   I   can  manage  without,  to-night,  I'm 

so  dead  tired.     The  worst  of  it  is  that  if  the 

whiskey  fails  it  leaves  you  twice  as  rotten 

129 


Miss   Bollard's    Inspiration 

as  if  you  had  simply  lain  awake  without  it. 
Still!" 

"Better  try  it,"  Crombie  urged.  "It 
can't  fail  if  you  take  enough  of  it."  They 
went  in-doors  and  Crombie  got  a  bottle  down 
from  one  of  the  book-shelves  in  his  library, 
where  it  seemed  to  be  doing  duty  as  litera 
ture.  He  found  a  tumbler  on  the  shelf,  and 
he  went  out  to  the  dining-room  for  some 
water  and  sugar.  Mevison  refused  the  sugar, 
and  Crombie  said,  "You  don't  want  to  put 
in  too  much  water,  either."  Mevison  put  in 
so  little  as  to  leave  the  whiskey  he  drank 
off  almost  neat.  "  There,"  Crombie  said,  "  I 
guess  that  will  fetch  you."  He  poured  some 
water  into  a  tumbler,  and  handed  it  to  Mevi 
son  with  the  bottle  of  whiskey.  "  Better  take 
it  up  with  you.  If  the  first  dose  don't  do 
the  business,  the  second  will,  sure." 

Mevison  obeyed  him,  and  crept  slowly  up 
the  stairs  while  Crombie  stayed  to  put  out 
the  lights  and  follow  him  with  a  candle. 
130 


Miss  Bollard's   Inspiration 

"Give  me  something  to  read,"  he  whispered 
on  the  upper  landing.  "  Something  good 
and  dull.  I  find  that  sets  me  off  at  times." 

' '  Novel  ? ' '  Crombie  suggested . 

"No;  the  cheapest  story  interests  me  too 
much.  Haven't  you  got  some  sort  of  trav 
els — old  sort?" 

Crombie  found  on  a  hanging  shelf  in  the 
hall  a  volume  which  Mevison  said  would  do, 
and  they  bade  each  other  good-night.  Ev 
erybody  else,  plainly,  was  asleep,  and  Crom 
bie,  unused  as  he  was  to  such  psychological 
reflections,  felt  a  fine  conjecture  penetrate 
him  as  to  the  dreams  of  the  several  people 
slumbering  in  their  several  rooms.  He  dis 
missed  his  wife's  briefly,  because  for  one  thing 
she  would  be  sure  to  tell  them  to  him  when 
she  woke ;  but  he  hung  upon  those  of  Lillias 
Bellard,  whose  chamber  was  on  one  side  of 
Mevison's  room,  with  a  doorless  wall  between, 
and  those  of  Mrs.  Mevison,  whose  room,  on 
the  other  side,  opened  into  her  husband's. 


Miss   Bollard's   Inspiration 

It  occurred  to  Crombie  that  the  girl's  visions 
probably  concerned  a  radiant  future,  and  the 
woman's  a  radiant  past,  and  that  this  state 
was  in  both  cases  the  same.  He  did  not 
know  whether  the  hope  of  it  or  the  despair 
of  it  was  the  worse,  and,  having  no  one  there 
to  help  him  guess,  he  gave  it  up,  as  if  it  were 
a  conundrum,  and  opened  his  own  door, 
across  the  hall  from  those  of  his  three  guests, 
and  let  himself  in  very  softly,  so  as  not  to 
disturb  his  wife,  who  slept  in  the  room  next 
his. 


iVERSJTY 


(RS.  MEVISON  came  down  in  the 
morning  in  a  youthful  freshness 
so  alien  to  her  years,  though 
these  were  not  very  many,  that 
every  one  noted  it  and  was  surprised:  every 
one  but  poor  Mr.  Mevison,  as  she  called  him 
in  reporting  that  he  had  had  a  bad  night,  and 
she  had  left  him  trying  to  catch  a  little 
beauty-nap.  They  must  not  wait  breakfast 
for  him;  he  would  be  all  the  better-looking 
for  being  allowed  to  take  his  chances  later. 
She  noted  with  explicit  pleasure  that  they 
had  not  waited  for  her.  She  liked  that  Eng 
lish  way  of  breakfasting  catch-as-catch-can ; 
perhaps  that  was  not  just  the  phrase.  "  I'm 
afraid  your  whiskey  was  a  failure,  Mr.  Crom- 
bie,"  she  sweetly  turned  upon  the  host, 
133 


Miss  Bellard's   Inspiration 

"though  Mr.  Mevison  gave  it  a  fair  trial, 
I  should  say,  from  the  looks  of  the  bot 
tle!" 

Crombie  was  driven  to  the  mistake  of  ex 
cusing  himself.  "  There  wasn't  much  in  the 
bottle  when  he  took  it." 

"There  certainly  wasn't  much  when  he 
left  it!"  she  crowed  back.  "There's  a  little 
remedy  of  mine  that  I  give  him,  when  I  find 
out  he's  not  been  sleeping,  that  never  fails. 
But  the  difficulty  is  to  find  out.  Men  are 
so  odd !  I'm  the  last  to  know  such  a  thing ; 
I  suppose  he  thinks  it  will  worry  me.  I 
shall  give  you  some,  Mr.  Crombie,  and  the 
next  time  he  complains  to  you  I  want  you 
to  offer  it  instead  of  the  whiskey — as  if  it 
were  your  own  invention.  Won't  that  be 
good!" 

She  bade  them  please  not  stay  at  table  with 

her,  and  Crombie  went  into  his  library,  while 

Mrs.   Crombie  went  to  interview  the  cook 

about  luncheon  and  dinner.     Lillias  had  al- 

134 


Miss  Bellard's   Inspiration 

ready  slipped  away  and  found  Craybourne 
mysteriously  arrived  on  the  veranda,  where 
he  must  have  been  in  telepathic  communion 
with  her  for  some  minutes  before  she  left  the 
table.  She  sat  down  on  the  upper  tread  of 
the  stairs  leading  to  the  lawn  at  the  side 
of  the  house,  and  he  on  a  tread  lower, 
which  brought  his  head  on  a  level  with  hers. 
She  leaned  forward  with  her  elbows  on  her 
knees,  her  hands  pressed  together,  and  her 
face  slanted  towards  his  in  a  pose  favorable 
to  the  confidences  they  at  once  began  ex 
changing. 

"  I  never  knew,"  he  said,  "  that  your  eyes 
were  so  very  blue." 

"Nor  I  that  yours  were  so  very  black. 
But  mine  are  really  bluish  green.  What  are 
yours,  really?" 

"Blackish  green,  I  suppose."  He  took 
one  of  her  hands  from  the  other  and  exam 
ined  it  carefully,  without  and  within,  and 
then  restored  it  to  her. 

135 


Miss  Bellard's   Inspiration 

"  Will  it  do?"  she  asked.  "  Is  it  the  rose- 
leaf  pattern?" 

"It's  exquisite,"  he  sighed.  "It's  the 
prime  agent  of  your  grace.  I  remember  it 
in  the  air,  at  your  lectures  out  there ;  no  more 
like  a '  gesture '  than  the  movement  of  a  bough 
in  the  wind  or  the  sweep  of  a  bird's  wing." 

"Now,  that  is  true  poetry,"  Lillias  ten 
derly  mocked.  "What  do  you  think  of  my 
looks  generally,  this  morning?" 

"Generally?" 

"Yes;  I  flattered  myself  that  I  looked 
something  like  a  faded  flower." 

"You  look  like  the  red,  red  rose  that's 
newly  something  in  June." 

"Tea,  tea  rose,  you  mean.  But  one  gets 
credit  for  nothing!"  she  sighed.  "I  hardly 
slept  last  night." 

"  Poor  girl!    What  happened?" 

"  Dreadful  things,  grewsome  things,  things 
to  take  the  heart  out  of  one."  She  looked 
round  over  her  shoulder,  and  saw  Mrs.  Mevi- 

136 


Miss  Bellard's  Inspiration 

son  advance  from  the  doorway  to  the  rail  of 
the  veranda,  on  which  she  leaned  while  ex 
amining  the  sky.  She  knew  that  Mrs.  Mevi- 
son  had  seen  her  look  round,  but  they  both 
pretended  unconsciousness;  and  Mrs.  Mevi- 
son  went  in-doors.  Then  Lillias  said,  "I 
had  bad  dreams." 

"My  bad  dreams  come  from  something 
I've  eaten;  but  I  know  that  yours  must  be 
purely  psychological.  What  were  they 
about?"  he  asked. 

"  I  hate  to  tell  you.  About  a  lovers'  quar 
rel" — she  looked  again — "a  married  lovers' 
quarrel."  She  paused  and  then  added, 
abruptly,  "I  dreamed  that  a  woman  came 
into  her  husband's  room,  and  woke  him  out 
of  his  sleep,  and  began  accusing  and  up 
braiding  him.  He  groaned,  and  told  her  it 
was  the  first  sleep  he  had  had  for  nights, 
and  implored  her  to  go  away.  Then  he  be 
gan  to  threaten,  and  she  to  laugh —  Oh, 
Edmund,  it  was  terrible!" 
137 


Miss  Bellard's   Inspiration 

The  tears  came,  and  she  stretched  her 
hands  to  him  as  for  help.  When  he  of 
fered  to  take  them  she  pulled  them  back. 
"No,  no!  I  may  be  just  so,  sometime;  and 
you—" 

The  soft  plapping  of  a  woman's  footfall 
made  itself  heard,  and,  with  another  glance 
over  her  shoulder,  Lillias  saw  Mrs.  Mevison 
prowling  to  and  fro  at  the  farther  end  of  the 
veranda,  and  busying  herself  with  putting  in 
place  some  fallen  trailers  of  honeysuckle. 
Lillias  clutched  her  lover's  hand  and  pulled 
him  away  down  over  the  lawn  into  the  ave 
nue  leading  to  the  river.  There  she  bathed 
her  eyes  with  water  which  he  scooped  up 
and  held  in  his  joined  hands  for  her.  Then, 
seated  on  a  grassy  bank,  above  a  sunny 
ripple  of  the  stream,  they  continued  their 
study  of  the  lamentable  case  that  had  fallen 
in  their  way,  and  tried  to  divine  the  lesson 
of  it  for  themselves. 

"There  can't  be  any  doubt,"   she  said, 

138 


Miss  Bellard's   Inspiration 

"about  her  loving  him.  A  woman  couldn't 
do  such  things  to  a  man  she  was  indifferent 
to,  or  one  that  she  simply  hated.  She  loves 
him,  I  can  see  it  in  every  look  she  gives 
him;  and  what  do  you  suppose  is  the 
trouble?" 

"  Perhaps,"  he  suggested,  "  he  doesn't  love 
her,  and  she  knows  it." 

"  No,  that  can't  be  it.  If  he  didn't  love 
her  he  would  have  left  her  long  ago.  He  does 
love  her;  you  mustn't  think  he  doesn't." 

"  Dearest,  I  won't  if  you  say  so." 

"  No,  not  because  I  say  so,  but  because  it 
isn't  true." 

"Then  because  it  isn't  true." 

"  That  is  something  like."  She  drooped  a 
little  nearer,  so  that  their  shoulders  touched. 
"Where  was  I?" 

"They  are  cruel  because  they  are  kind." 

"Something  of  that  sort.  But  you  see, 
now,  that  love  in  itself  isn't  enough  to  keep 
people  friends?" 

139 


Miss  Bollard's    Inspiration 

"  Do  you  mean  that  it  has  to  be  mixed  with 
a  little  reason?" 

"  With  a  good  deal  of  reason." 

"Well,  you  shall  supply  the  reason  and  I 
will  supply  the  love.  I'll  tell  you  what  I 
think  the  trouble  is:  Mrs.  Mevison  is  a  fool. 
I  thought  so  the  first  time  I  saw  her." 

"  Then  she's  a  fool  by  her  woman's  nature, 
as  much  as  by  her  own." 

"  Oh,  I  don't  blame  her  for  being  a  fool,  any 
more  than  I  praise  you  for  being  a  sage. 
She  wants  to  exact  everything  from  her  hus 
band  because  she  would  like  to  give  him  ev 
erything — if  she  could." 

"  That  doesn't  sound  very  logical." 

"  It's  as  logical  as  it  can  be  under  the  cir 
cumstances." 

They  both  laughed  at  this,  more  and  more 
fondly,  and  she  said,  "Well,  then,  what  we 
have  got  to  do  is  to  love  each  other  less  and 
less." 

"Something  like  that,"  he  consented,  and 
140 


Miss  Bellard's   Inspiration 

they  began  throwing  little  sticks  into  the 
stream  and  watching  them  drift  off  together 
over  the  ripple. 

They  named  them  after  themselves,  and 
she  said,  "Now  Edmund  is  chasing  Lillias!" 

"No,  it's  Lillias  that's  chasing  Edmund!" 
he  retorted. 

They  sauntered  back  to  the  house  buoy 
ant  from  their  nonsense,  with  renewed  hope 
and  faith  in  themselves,  and  Mrs.  Mevison 
met  them  at  the  veranda  steps.  Mevison 
was  sitting  there,  and  she  called  gayly,  as  if 
for  him  to  hear:  "Ah,  I  saw  you  escaping 
me!  I  wanted  to  follow  you  and  eavesdrop 
your  billing  and  cooing.  All  the  world  loves 
a  lover,  they  say,  you  know,  and  I'm  hungry 
for  a  taste  of  your  happiness.  Yes,  I  would 
eavesdrop,  if  I  could.  Fair  exchange  is  no 
robbery,  is  it,  Miss  Bellard?  What  do  you 
call  each  other  now?  You  won't  always  call 
each  other  sweet  names,  but  you'll  always 
mean  sweetness  by  any  name.  You  mustn't 
141 


Miss  Bellard's   Inspiration 

be  astonished  at  the  change,  Miss  Bellard. 
Why,  the  first  time  Mr.  Mevison  said  to  me, 
'  Stubborn  little  fool !'  I  hardly  knew  where 
to  look ;  but  I  soon  found  out  that  it  meant 
the  same  as  ducky  or  dovey.  Didn't  it, 
ducky-dovey?" 

She  went  up  to  Mevison,  sitting  gloomily 
tilted  back  in  his  chair,  and  from  behind  him 
clapped  her  hands  on  his  cheeks  and  pressed 
her  own  cheek  down  on  his  head.  When  she 
released  him,  he  flung  his  arms  wildly  about 
in  the  effort  to  recover  his  balance.  Cray- 
bourne  and  Lillias  ran  too  late  to  catch  him 
from  falling.  Mrs.  Mevison  stopped  herself 
in  a  shriek  of  laughter. 

"Oh,  what  a  shame!  Do  forgive  me, 
Arthur!" 

She  lent  her  aid  with  the  others;  but 
Lillias  saw  him  pushing  his  wife's  hands 
away,  when  he  could,  with  looks  of  deadly 
rage. 

"I'm  afraid,"  he  said  to  Lillias,  when  he 
142 


Miss  Bellard's   Inspiration 

had  got  back  to  his  pose,  "  that  I  was  rather 
ridiculous." 

"  Oh,  no  one  thought  of  such  a  thing,  Ar 
thur,"  his  wife  said,  with  indignant  tender 
ness. 

"  I'm  so  glad  we  were  in  time,  Mr.  Mevi- 
son,"  the  girl  said. 

"  You're  all  right  now?"  Craybourne  asked. 

With  a  little  more  polite  parley  the  lovers 
got  themselves  away,  Craybourne  declaring 
that  he  must  go  back  to  the  hotel.  Mrs. 
Mevison  remained  superfluously  putting  her 
husband  in  shape,  and  brushing  specks  of 
imaginary  dust  from  his  clothes,  and  com 
passionately  cooing  over  him. 

Lillias  went  down  the  avenue  with  Cray- 
bourne  to  the  ferry,  and  then  trailed  slowly 
back  over  the  stubble,  with  her  head  down. 
When  she  lifted  it  she  saw  Mrs.  Mevison 
sweeping  swiftly  towards  her. 

"Just  one  moment,  Miss  Bellard!"  Mrs. 
Mevison  called  to  her.  The  voice  was  gay, 
143 


Miss  Bellard's  Inspiration 

and  even  arch,  but  there  was  a  note  of  battle 
in  it,  which  no  woman  could  have  mistaken, 
though  a  man  might  have  been  deceived. 
When  she  came  up  to  the  girl,  who  was  star 
ing  fearlessly  at  her,  she  broke  out  in  tones 
thick  with  fury:  "  Don't  think  I  don't  know 
that  you  heard,  last  night.  I  don't  say  you 
listened!" 

"No,  Mrs.  Mevison,"  Lillias  said,  rather 
dreadfully. 

The  woman  tossed  her  head.  "  If  you  had 
listened,  you  might  have  heard  the  good  of 
yourself  that  listeners  always  hear.  It  is 
you,  you  that  have  added  the  last  straw! 
Do  you  suppose  I  don't  know  that  from  the 
first  moment  my  husband  entered  that 
house  you  were  making  a  set  at  him?  Do 
you  suppose  I  can't  see  that  your  engage 
ment  to  that  wretched  cockney  is  a  mere 
blind,  and  that  you're  waiting  till  my  hus 
band  and  I  are  separated  to  transfer  your 
easy  affections  to  him?  Do  you  imagine  I 
144 


Miss   Bollard's   Inspiration 

couldn't  feel  the  flirt-nature  in  you  as  soon 
as  I  came  near  you  ?  Arthur  and  I  might  still 
have  made  it  up ;  he  was  getting  to  see  the 
trouble  from  my  point  of  view,  but  when  you 
came  in  between  us — "  She  choked  with 
her  rage,  and  suddenly  she  changed  from 
accusation  to  imploring.  "  Leave  him  to  me, 
Miss  Bellard,  and  it  will  all  come  right!  I 
didn't  intend  to  push  him  over  just  now,  but 
when  I  saw  how  it  shocked  you,  with  your 
goody-goody  pretences,  I  laughed,  and  I 
was  glad  I  did  it.  But  now,  now  I  would  give 
anything—  I  take  it  all  back  about  you! 
Yes,  I  do.  And  I  beg  your  pardon!  I  don't 
accuse  you  of  anything.  It  is  his  fault,  all  his 
fault;  and  if  you  will  only  say  that  you  will 
not  encourage  him — 

At  this  point  Lillias  did  a  wrong  thing, 
but  it  may  be  contended  that  she  was  rather 
sorely  tried.  ''Get  away!"  she  said,  with  a 
contempt  past  description,  and  she  advanced 
upon  Mrs.  Mevison  as  if  she  would  tread  her 
145 


Miss  Bellard's   Inspiration 

down.     The  other  had  no  alternative  but  to 
slip  aside. 

"Don't  take  it  so!"  she  besought  the  piti 
less  girl.  "  I  know  that  you  love  Mr.  Cray- 
bourne.  I  take  back  calling  him  a  cockney. 
He  isn't.  He's  fine  and  good.  Any  one  can 
see  it.  And  you  are  going  to  have  in  him 
what  I  have  lost  in  my  husband !  That  ought 
to  make  you  a  little  lenient.  It  ought, 
oughtn't  it?  See  how  I  humble  myself  to 
you!  I  hope  you  may  never,  never  have  to 
humble  yourself  to  another  woman  as  I  am 
doing  to  you.  We  began  as  sweetly  as  you 
are  beginning  now.  There  was  nothing  I 
wouldn't  do  for  him,  or  he  for  me.  There 
never  were  people  so  devoted.  And  it  has 
come  to  this  with  us !  We  are  going  to  part, 
unless — unless  you  can  show  him  that  you 
don't  care  for  him.  I  know  you  don't,  but 
he  thinks  you  do!  If  he  knew  you  didn't, 
he  would  be  reconciled  to  me,  and  we  could 
be  happy  again.  My  life  is  wrapped  up  in 
146 


Miss  Bellard's   Inspiration 

him.  Oh,  if  you  won't  have  pity  on  me, 
have  pity  on  yourself!  You  can't  expect  to 
be  happy  in  your  marriage  if  you  break  up 
mine.  Give  me  back  my  husband — no,  give 
him  back  to  himself,  his  better  self!  If  you 
don't,  my  misery  will  be  upon  you;  it  will 
bring  you  to  judgment." 

Lillias  strode  relentlessly  on  in  silent  scorn 
of  the  frantic  woman,  who  pursued  her  at 
last  with  a  long-drawn,  heart-broken,  heart 
breaking  "Oh!" 


XI 


(T  luncheon  Mrs.  Mevison  was  of 
a  calm  that  betrayed  no  signs 
of  the  morning's  tempests.  Lil- 
lias  and  she  observed  a  truce 
that  had  the  effect  of  a  peace,  unbroken  by 
any  hostile  experience,  and  in  the  absence  of 
Craybourne,  who  had  apparently  not  found 
himself  equal  to  further  eventualities,  Mrs. 
Mevison  seemed  less  exasperated  by  the  sense 
of  the  happiness  so  near  and  yet  so  far  from 
her.  She  was  very  sweet  and  gentle  with 
every  one,  from  the  waitress  to  Mevison,  so 
that  Crombie  could  scarcely  credit  his  old 
friend  when  Mevison  said,  in  the  stroll  which 
he  took  at  Crombie' s  side  a  few  hours  before 
dinner,  "Well,  it  has  been  amicably  ar 
ranged  with  Mrs.  Mevison." 
148 


Miss  Bollard's   Inspiration 

"What  do  you  mean?" 
"We  are  going  to  part — friends." 
"Has  it  really  come  to  that?     I  was  in 
hopes,   seeing  you  so  pleasant  together  at 
luncheon— 

Mevison  shook  his  head  sadly.  "  All  wom 
en  like  to  put  a  good  face  on  things,  and  Mrs. 
Mevison  above  all  other  women.  After  we 
had  agreed  to  separate  peaceably,  it  was  an 
easy  matter  to  agree  upon  behaving  our 
selves  decently  during  the  brief  remnant  of 
our  union.  She  feels,  as  I  do,  that  we  owe 
that  much  to  you  and  Mrs.  Crombie,  if  not 
to  each  other."  To  Crombie's  vast  aston 
ishment  he  added,  "She  isn't  unreasonable; 
you  mustn't  think  that;  and  you  mustn't 
think  that  in  this  business  the  fault  has 
been  altogether  on  her  side,  as  I  believe  I 
told  you  before.  I  don't  pretend  that  I'm 
not  a  trying  man  to  live  with  at  times. 
Certainly  I'm  trying  to  such  a  woman  as 
Clarice.  And  in  our  rows  I  do  my  full  share 
149 


Miss   Bellard's   Inspiration 

of  the  nagging.  I've  got  a  nasty  temper  of 
my  own,  and  I  give  her  as  good  as  she  sends, 
though  I  know  all  the  time  how  much  worse 
I'm  hurting  her  than  she  is  hurting  me.  It 
isn't  out  of  any  wickedness  she  does  it;  I 
can't  make  any  one  else  understand.  My 
God!  how  vulgar  it  all  is!  But  it's  coming 
to  an  end,  quickly  and  quietly." 

Through  all  this  Crombie  had  a  fuzzy  no 
tion  that  he  was  ill-used,  or  if  not  he,  then 
Mrs.  Crombie.  She  had  asked  these  people 
into  the  house  to  do  him  a  pleasure  through 
her  hospitality  to  his  old  friend,  and  now, 
confound  them,  they  were  abusing  her  hos 
pitality  with  their  infernal  jangling,  and  they 
were  going  to  set  the  seal  to  the  outrage  by 
breaking  up  under  his  roof.  It  was  like  hav 
ing  a  double  suicide  on  one's  premises.  It 
was  violating  the  sanctities  of  a  Christian 
home.  It  was  a  species  of  sacrilege ;  it  was 
a  scandal.  People  would  say  —  there  was 
no  saying  what  people  would  not  say,  if 


Miss  Bellard's   Inspiration 

Mevison  and  his  wife  had  this  sort  of  burst- 
up  on  the  place,  with  the  subsequent  pro 
ceedings  for  divorce.  Mrs.  Crombie  and  he 
might  be  dragged  into  the  trial  as  wit 
nesses.  Lillias  might;  Craybourne  might.  He 
kept  his  injury  out  of  his  voice  as  well  as  he 
could  in  asking,  "Do  you  mean  that  you  are 
going  to  separate  now,  right  off  the  handle?" 

"We  shall  not  even  leave  your  house  to 
gether,  if  you  will  allow  me  to  leave  her  be 
hind  me  for  an  hour  or  two.  I  expect  to 
take  the  train  for  Quebec,  and  she  will  take 
the  Boston  express  when  it  comes  along.  It's 
all  arranged.  We  were  packed  in  view  of 
this  possibility,  this  moral  certainty,  before 
we  came  to  you." 

"Well,  see  here,  Mevison,"  Crombie  said, 
with  a  knotted  brow  of  extreme  perplexity, 
"  I  hope  it  won't  seem  unreasonable  to  you 
if  I  ask  you  whether  you  can't  hold  up  a 
little." 

"How  hold  up?" 


Miss  Bellard's   Inspiration 

The  two  men  paused  in  their  ramble  and 
stood  facing  each  other. 

4 'Hold  up  till  you  get  away.  Go  off  to 
gether,  and  separate  at  the  Junction."  The 
word  dimly  suggested  something  different  to 
Crombie,  but  he  ignored  its  suggestion;  or, 
rather,  he  postponed  it  to  its  possible  effect 
upon  Mevison  when  he  got  to  the  Junction. 
"This  thing  is  going  to  make  a  lot  of  talk. 
It's  going  to  get  into  the  papers ;  such  things 
always  do,  nowadays.  There'll  be  a  raft  of 
reporters  round.  My  house  will  be  snap 
shotted,  and  my  wife's  photograph  and  mine 
and  Lillias's  and  Craybourne's  will  be  group 
ed  round  yours  and  Mrs.  Mevison's,  with  bits 
of  the  Saco  Valley  scenery,  in  the  Sunday 
editions.  You  see?" 

Mevison's  jaw  fell.  "  I  see,"  he  admitted, 
in  a  kind  of  dismay. 

Crombie  had  made  his  point,  and  he  start 
ed  on,  with  Mevison  limping  at  his  side.  "  I 
hope,  old  fellow,  you  feel  that  I've  been  with 


Miss  Bellard's  Inspiration 

you  in  this  deplorable  business,  first,  last,  and 
all  the  time.  It's  very  well  for  you  to  blame 
yourself ;  it's  handsome,  and  manly,  and  gen 
erous,  and  chivalrous,  and  all  that  rot,  but 
unless  you've  changed  most  infernally  from 
the  fellow  I  used  to  know  at  Rene's — " 

"  I  have,  Crombie,"  Mevison  sadly  respond 
ed.  "  Marriage  changes  a  man;  or,  rather,  it 
finds  him  out.  I've  been  to  blame;  but  all 
that's  too  late  now." 

"I'm  not  advocating  your  remaining  to 
gether.  It's  probably  best  for  both  of  you 
that  you  should  separate.  It  seems  to  me 
that  it's  come  to  that — for  a  while  at  least. 
But,  Mevison,  don't  do  it  here !  It  will  break 
Mrs.  Crombie  up  awfully." 

Mevison  laughed  miserably.  "  It  will 
break  Mrs.  Mevison  up,  too." 

"  Yes,  I  suppose  it  will.  But,  you  see,  Mrs. 
Crombie  isn't  in  it  as  Mrs.  Mevison  is." 

"No." 

"She's  tried  to   act   nicely   in  the  whole 


Miss  Bellard's   Inspiration 

business,  Mrs.  Crombie  has;  but  it's  killing 
her  by  inches."  When  Crombie  made  use 
of  this  image,  he  could  not  help  making  the 
reflection  that  Mevison  might  think  there 
were  a  good  many  inches  of  Mrs.  Crombie  to 
kill,  and  that  her  vitality  would  hold  out  a 
long  while  in  the  process.  He  made  haste 
to  add,  "  Of  course,  I  beg  your  pardon.  But 
what  I'm  getting  at  is  the  idea  of  making 
this  business  as  easy  for  Mrs.  Crombie  as  pos 
sible.  Now,  why  can't  you  two  go  off  to 
gether  and  separate  at  the  Junction?  Why 
can't  you  put  that  idea  before  Mrs.  Mevison? 
She  might  take  to  it." 

Mevison  frowned,  in  a  recurrence  of  the 
disgust  for  his  wife  which  Crombie' s  cham 
pionship  of  himself  had  momentarily  dis 
sipated.  "  Yes,  she  might  consent,  if  it  were 
not  for  her  cursed  histrionics.  She  consented 
to  my  leaving  her  in  your  house,  I  believe,  as 
much  for  the  dramatic  effect  as  anything— 

"But,  don't  you  see?  It  will  be  a  great 
154 


Miss  Bellard's   Inspiration 

deal  more  dramatic  for  you  to  part  at  the 
Junction.  The  up-train  and  the  down-train 
meet  there ;  you  get  aboard  one  and  she  gets 
aboard  the  other,  and  that  ends  it." 

Crombie's  voice  rose  in  a  cheerfulness,  as 
he  urged  his  point,  which  it  had  not  expressed 
before.  But  Mevison  apparently  did  not 
share  his  gay  expectation.  "There's  no  tell 
ing  how  she  will  take  the  idea.  I'm  afraid  it 
will  lead  to  a  review  of  the  whole  case.  But 
I  will  try  it  with  her.  It  is  certainly  your 
due  in  the  matter,  and  Mrs.  Crombie's  due. 
I  hope,  Crombie,  you  understand  how  very 
grateful  I  feel  towards  you  both?" 
"Oh,  that's  all  right,  Mevison." 
They  dismissed  the  matter,  from  their  talk, 
at  least,  and  finished  their  stroll  in  such  re 
moteness  from  it  that  Crombie  was  able  to 
gather  some  wild  sweetbrier  roses  and  bring 
them  home.  Mrs.  Mevison  admired  them 
so  much  when  he  arrived  with  them  on  the 
veranda  where  she  was  sitting  with  his  wife 
155 


Miss   Bollard's   Inspiration 

that  he  gave  them  to  her,  bidding  her  be  care 
ful  not  to  scratch  herself. 

"Oh,  I  know  how  to  manage,"  she  said. 
"Give  me  your  handkerchief,  Arthur,"  and 
when  he  held  it  out  to  her  she  put  it  round 
the  thorny  stems,  and  said,  with  a  trium 
phant  smile  up  into  Crombie's  face,  "  There!" 

It  was  all  very  lurid  to  Crombie.  With  his 
privity  to  the  impending  tragedy  he  felt  like 
a  fiend,  and  in  this  comedy  he  was  playing 
with  the  victim- villain  of  the  tragedy  he  felt 
like  a  fool. 

He  was  still  of  no  very  determinate  convic 
tion  with  respect  to  himself  at  large,  when, 
after  the  women  had  left  them  that  night, 
and  Mevison  and  he  sat  over  their  cigars  on 
the  veranda  and  absently  marked  the  Big 
Dipper  filling  its  bowl  with  the  clear  night 
above  the  Presidential  Range,  Mevison  said, 
in  a  low  voice,  "Well,  it's  all  right." 

"  You  suggested  my  idea  to  Mrs.  Mevison?" 

"Yes,  and  she  took  to  the  notion  of  the 

156 


Miss  Bellard's   Inspiration 

Junction  instantly.  It  satisfied  the  curious 
kind  of  poetry  that  Clarice  has  in  her." 

Crombie  thought  it  a  very  curious  kind  of 
poetry,  but  he  thought  it  best  not  to  say  so, 
and  Mevison  went  on. 

"  I  gave  her  some  inkling  of  how  you  felt, 
and  she  instantly  entered  into  your  feeling. 
Clarice  is  a  very  reasonable  woman  in  those 
things.  She  is  very  intelligent." 

Mevison  heaved  a  long,  low  sigh,  with 
which  he  exhaled  a  volume  of  smoke,  whiten 
ing  in  the  clear,  chill  night  air. 

"  Well,  then,"  Crombie  said,  "  if  it's  all  set 
tled,  I  hope  you'll  get  a  good  night's  rest, 
and  start  fresh  in  the  morning."  This  was 
not  quite  what  he  would  have  wished  to 
say,  but  he  let  it  go. 

"  No  doubt  about  that,"  Mevison  returned. 
"  As  I  haven't  slept  for  several  nights  past,  I 
should  be  pretty  sure  of  sleeping  to-night 
even  if  I  didn't  feel  so  strangely  at  peace. 
I  suppose  it's  the  peace  of  exhaustion. 


Miss  Bollard's   Inspiration 

I  suppose  Clarice  feels  the  same,  poor 
woman!" 

"Better  take  the  whiskey  up  with  you," 
Crombie  said,  as  they  rose  from  their  tobacco 
at  last. 

"  No,  I'm  all  right  without,  don't  be  afraid. 
Besides,  Clarice  has  given  me  some  sleep- 
medicine  of  hers  that  she  finds  never  fails." 


XII 


(ROMBIE  also  felt  something  of 
that  peace  from  exhaustion  of 
which  Mevison  had  all  but 
boasted,  as  he  entered  his  room 
very  carefully,  so  as  not  to  waken  Mrs. 
Crombie,  whom  he  imagined  asleep  beyond 
the  door  opening  into  her  own  room.  He 
was  surprised  to  have  her  look  in  at  him,  as 
if  she  had  been  waiting  up  for  him.  But  he 
said,  as  if  he  had  expected  it : 

"Well,   you  know  they're  going,   in  the 
morning?" 

"Yes,  she  told  me." 
"And  they're  going  to  separate,  too." 
"Separate!" 

"You  must  have  seen  it  was  coming  to 
that.     I  had  it  out  with  Mevison  this  after- 
159 


Miss   Bellard's   Inspiration 

noon  when  we  were  walking;  but  I  didn't 
mean  to  tell  you  till  they  were  out  of  the 
house.  They  meant  to  separate  before  they 
left  us,  he  taking  the  up-train  and  she  the 
down-train,  an  hour  later.  But  I  told  him 
that  it  wouldn't  do;  that  it  would  make  talk 
about  us,  and  bring  us  into  their  row  in  all 
sorts  of  ways." 

"That  was  very  thoughtful  of  you,  Archi 
bald." 

"He  saw  the  point,  too.  I  made  him 
promise  that  they  would  decently  leave  the 
house  together,  and  leave  the  Saco  Shore 
station  together,  and  do  their  confounded 
separating  at  the  Junction." 

Crombie  ended  in  an  exasperation,  in 
which  he  lifted  his  voice,  out  of  the  whisper 
they  had  been  using,  into  a  thick  barytone. 

"  'Sh !"  she  hissed.     "  Don't  speak  so  loud ! 

You've  done  the  wisest  thing  that  could  be 

done;  but  I  don't  think  it  was  delicate  of 

them  to  come  here  at  all.     What  do  you 

160 


Miss  Bellard's   Inspiration 

suppose  could  have  possessed  them  to  do  it, 
when  they  knew — " 

"I  don't  believe  they  did  know.  It's 
something  they  couldn't  realize;  at  least, 
Mevison  couldn't.  They've  been  fighting 
along  for  years,  and  as  far  as  their  nerves  are 
concerned  they're  no  nearer  the  end  now 
than  they  ever  were;  their  consciousness 
doesn't  accept  the  fact.  Mevison  talked 
like  a  fool;  I  wanted  to  laugh.  He  would 
pitch  into  her,  and  pitch  into  himself,  and 
then  he  would  dwell  on  her  good  qualities, 
and  he  concluded,  when  we  came  off  to  bed, 
by  refusing  whiskey  for  his  insomnia,  be 
cause  he  was  going  to  try  some  sleep-medi 
cine  that  his  wife  had  given  him."  Crombie 
ended  in  a  note  of  hollow  laughter  which  at 
tested  the  derision  in  which  he  held  Mevi 
son' s  absurdity. 

His  laughter  made  his  wife  say  u'Sh!" 
again,  but  she  smiled  herself  before  she  add 
ed,  severely,  "Well,  I  hope  they  will  sepa- 
161 


Miss  Bollard's   Inspiration 

rate.  It  will  be  the  best  thing  for  them. 
They  can't  respect  each  other  after  what  they 
have  done  —  or  she  has  done.  But  what  a 
dreadful  thing  to  come  into  our  lives!" 

"I  suppose  we  can  stand  it  if  they  can," 
Crombie  gloomily  suggested.  "I  can't  help 
being  sorry  for  poor  old  Mevison." 

"I  am  sorry  for  her,  too.     You  can  see 
that  she's  perfectly  wrapped  up  in  him." 
"  Well,  she  has  a  queer  way  of  showing  it." 
"Not  at  all!     But  what  I  keep  thinking 
of,  all  the  time,  is  the  effect  it  is  going  to  have 
on  Lillias." 

"What  has  it  got  to  do  with  Lillias?" 
"It  is  such  an  awful  warning." 
"  I  hope  it  will  be  a  warning  to  her  to  be 
have  herself.     She  mustn't  suppose  that  an 
Englishman  will   stand   any  such  jinks   as 
Mrs.  Mevison's.     It's  a  very  good  thing  for 
Lillias." 

"Perhaps.     But   oh,   dear   me!     What  a 
heart-breaking  thing  it  is,  Archibald,  when 
162 


Miss  Bellard's   Inspiration 

you  come  to  think  of  it !  We've  never  come 
so  near  to  a  separation  —  other  people's,  I 
mean  —  before.  Isn't  it  strange  that  with 
all  the  separating  and  divorcing  that  seems 
to  be  going  on,  one  has  so  very  little  of  it 
in  one's  own  circle?" 

"I'm  not  sure  but  there  had  better  be 
more  of  it." 

"You  know  you  don't  think  that,  my 
dear!" 

"Well,  anyway,  I  think  I'll  go  to  bed. 
I'm  awfully  sleepy." 

"  Yes,  you  must  be  worn  out  by  it.  Good 
night,  darling." 

The  epithet  would  not  have  seemed  a  very 
close  fit  for  Crombie  with  a  dispassionate 
witness,  but  these  things  are  never  intended 
for  the  dispassionate  witness,  and  perhaps 
the  kindly  pair  looked  much  the  same  in  each 
other's  eyes  as  a  younger  couple  might  have 
looked  to  one  another. 

Crombie  might  have  been  in  bed  half  an 
163 


Miss  Bellard's   Inspiration 

hour,  and  he  had  got  distinctly  past  the 
border  between  drowsing  and  sleeping,  when 
he  heard  a  sort  of  scraping  sound.  He  was 
aware  of  it  scraping  and  scraping  as  if  it 
were  scraping  through  his  sleep,  and  getting 
down  to  a  dream  beneath,  and  finally  reach 
ing  the  quick  of  his  waking.  He  roused 
himself  with  a  sense  of  having  a  head  of 
balloon  -  like  vastness  and  lightness,  which, 
when  he  sat  up  in  bed,  seemed  to  sway  and 
swing  on  his  shoulders  as  if  impatient  for  an 
ascent  to  the  ceiling. 

The  instant  he  sat  up,  the  gnawing  or  the 
scraping  ceased.  But  he  got  out  of  bed,  and 
went  and  bathed  his  eyes,  so  as  to  be  ready 
for  any  emergency,  in  which  quickness  of  vi 
sion  was  requisite,  like  that  of  a  rat.  The 
precaution  aided  in  rousing  him  fully,  and 
at  once  reduced  the  dimensions  of  his  head, 
so  that  he  had  no  difficulty  in  putting  it  out 
of  the  door  into  the  hall  and  peering  with 
his  candle  into  its  emptiness  and  silence. 
164 


Miss  Bellard's   Inspiration 

It  was  so  absolutely  empty  and  so  abso 
lutely  silent  that  the  void  seemed  to  mock 
his  vision,  and  the  stillness  hummed  in  his 
ear  with  an  audible  derision.  "Well,"  he 
said  to  himself,  "I  don't  care  what  it  was 
before,  it  isn't  anything  now.  I  probably 
dreamed  it." 

He  went  back  into  his  room,  however,  and 
mechanically  got  into  his  clothes,  and  wait 
ed  for  that  gnawing,  or  that  scraping,  to  be 
gin  again.  He  was  determined  not  to  let  it 
surprise  him;  he  was  determined  to  surprise 
it.  With  a  resolution  that  affected  him  as 
adamantine,  he  drowsed  again,  and  then 
started  from  his  drowse,  not  to  the  accus 
tomed  noise,  but  to  the  sound,  as  he  fancied, 
of  a  door  in  the  hall  quickly  opened  and 
quickly  shut. 

He  flung  his  own  door  open,  but  again  the 
innocent  emptiness  and  silence  of  the  dark 
hall  offered  themselves  in  a  sort  of  gentle  re 
proach  of  his  turbulence.  He  waited,  now, 

165 


Miss  Bellard's   Inspiration 

a  considerable  time,  but  the  emptiness  and 
silence  maintained  themselves  in  conscious 
innocence,  and  after  a  vain  prolongation  of 
his  final  scrutiny  of  the  shadows  he  returned 
to  his  chair. 

This  time  he  did  not  drowse ;  he  could  not, 
he  was  so  furious  at  being  played  upon — that 
is,  he  did  not  believe  he  was  drowsing,  but  it 
was  certainly  not  from  a  vigil  that  he  again 
started  to  his  feet.  Now  he  did  not  fling  his 
door  open  into  the  hall,  but  softly  set  it  ajar 
and  waited  on  the  threshold  for  the  scraping 
or  the  gnawing  to  begin.  Then  he  was 
aware  of  a  soft  movement  in  the  hall,  and  a 
figure,  the  figure  of  a  woman  fully  dressed 
and  bearing  a  candle  in  one  hand  while  the 
other  held  her  skirt  behind  from  the  floor, 
as  the  fashion  of  women  is,  or  lately  was, 
crept  as  with  down-shod  feet  to  the  door  of 
Mevison's  room  and  began  to  scrape  on  it 
with  her  finger-nails.  It  was  unmistakably 
Mrs.  Mevison,  and,  unless  she  was  sleep- 
166 


Miss  Bollard's   Inspiration 

walking,  it  was  Mrs.  Mevison  inspired  by  a 
fell  intent  of  which  the  conception  almost 
bereft  Crombie  of  his  habitual  politeness  and 
the  hospitable  sense  of  the  sacred  character 
of  a  guest. 

"What  are  you  doing  that  for?"  he  whis 
pered,  hoarsely,  harshly. 

She  turned  and  looked  at  him  where  he 
stood  at  his  door,  and  measured  him  in  mass 
and  detail  with  an  imperious  eye.  "I  am 
trying  to  waken  my  husband,"  she  answered, 
with  a  dignified  calm  which  he  could  hope  to 
emulate. 

Crombie' s  belief  was  that  she  was  doing  it 
for  pure  mischief,  and  with  a  diabolical  in 
tent  of  tormenting  her  husband,  who  had 
probably  locked  the  door  between  them 
to  prevent  her  talking  to  him,  but  this  was 
a  belief  which  he  could  not  well  express 
even  to  a  woman  for  whom  he  had  tacitly 
allowed  himself  a  wide  range  of  disrespect. 
All  he  could  do  was  to  say,  "Oh!"  and  stand 


Miss  Bollard's  Inspiration 

there  till  he  heard  a  responsive  stirring  with 
in  Mevison's  room. 

After  an  interval  long  enough  for  Mevison 
to  light  a  candle  and  get  to  the  door  it  was 
unlocked  and  thrown  open,  and  he  appeared 
on  the  threshold. 

"  Oh,  Arthur,"  she  began,  in  the  way  peo 
ple  do  who  have  been  unexpectedly  remind 
ed,  "I  was  just  coming  to  tell  you  something 
I  had  thought  of  that  will  make  us  see  every 
thing  in  a  new  and  different  light ;  and — 

Her  husband  put  his  arm  round  her  and 
looked  over  her  shoulder  at  Crombie  with  a 
countenance  of  severe  amaze.  Then  he  mur 
mured,  "Come  in,  Clarice,"  and  drew  her  in 
side  the  room  and  closed  the  door  in  Crom- 
bie's  face. 

The  whole  household  slept  late,  and  there 
was  barely  time  for  the  Mevisons  to  get 
from  the  breakfast  -  table  to  the  train  that 
was  to  carry  them  to  the  Junction  together. 
After  what  had  happened  at  their  last  meet- 
168 


Miss   Bellard's   Inspiration 

ing,  Crombie  was  not  surprised  that  Mevi- 
son  should  bear  himself  somewhat  awk 
wardly  towards  him.  On  the  other  hand, 
Mrs.  Mevison  was  not  only  very  sweet  with 
Mrs.  Crombie  and  Lillias,  and  tender  with 
the  waitress,  to  whom  he  afterwards  saw  her 
giving  a  tip  out  of  all  proportion  to  the  length 
of  her  stay  under  his  roof,  but  she  behaved 
with  extreme  gentleness  towards  Crombie 
himself.  He  understood,  as  well  as  if  she 
had  put  it  in  words,  that  this  was  in  triumph 
over  him  and  his  suspicions;  he  surmised 
that  she  had  been  able  to  make  Mevison 
make  up  their  quarrel,  and  that  between 
them  they  had  offered  him  a  sacrifice  on 
the  altar  of  their  domestic  happiness.  As 
long  as  they  were  all  together,  Mevison  did 
not  relax  from  the  stiffness  with  which  he 
comported  himself  towards  Crombie,  but 
there  came  a  moment  when  his  wife  did  not 
keep  the  two  men  from  meeting  alone. 
Mevison  improved  the  chance,  rather  sheep- 
169 


Miss  Bellard's   Inspiration 

ishly.  "My  wife  will  tell  Mrs.  Crombie,  but 
I  think  I  ought  to  tell  you,  that  Clarice  and  I 
are  going  to  try  it  together  again.  She  has 
seen  our  whole  relation  in  a  more  possible 
light,  and  I  must  say  that  she  has  shown  me 
where  I  have  been  in  fault,  and  how  lean 
avoid  future  causes  of  trouble.  It's  only 
right  I  should  tell  you  that  when  you  saw 
her  last  night  she  was  impatient  to  tell  me 
what  she  had  thought  of,  and  was  trying  to 
waken  me  without  disturbing  any  one  else." 

"  Oh,  I  understand  that  now,  and  I  wish 
you  would  offer  Mrs.  Mevison  my  very  sin 
cere  apologies  for  my  seeming  intrusion." 

"  I  will,  Crombie,  with  the  greatest  pleas 
ure,  for  I  know  how  glad  she  will  be  to  feel 
that  you  are  doing  her  justice.  There  is  not 
a  more  generous  creature  under  the  sun." 

"  Oh,  I  can  see  that.  I  can  see  that  it  has 
been  only  her  impulsiveness — I  beg  your  par 
don!" 

11  Not  at  all,  old  fellow.  As  I  told  you  yes- 
170 


Miss  Bollard's   Inspiration 

terday  afternoon,  though,  I  have  been  to 
blame  myself.  I  see  that  more  clearly  than 
ever."  They  were  both  silent,  for  now  they 
seemed  to  have  come  to  the  end  of  their  say, 
but  Mevison  added,  with  an  appeal  as  if  from 
some  profound  insecurity,  which  Crombie 
found  very  affecting,  "We  feel  as  if  we  were 
beginning  all  over  again,  and  I  know  that 
we  are  going  forward  on  ground  where  there 
will  be  no  room  for  the  old — anxieties." 

"I'm  sure  of  that,  Mevison." 

' '  Thank  you,  Crombie — thank  you !"  Mevi- 
son's  voice  trembled  a  little,  and  he  wrung  his 
friend's  hand  hard. 

Mrs.  Mevison  parted  emotionally  with  all. 
She  pressed  Crombie 's  hand  as  if  in  recogni 
tion  of  a  sacred  confidence  between  them, 
and  she  exacted  from  Mrs.  Crombie  almost 
a  promise  that  they  would  both  come  to  see 
her  when  she  and  Arthur  were  settled  in 
New  York  for  the  winter,  though  she  knew 
how  hard  it  would  be  for  her  to  tear  herself 
171 


Miss  Bellard's   Inspiration 

from  her  beloved  Boston.  She  thanked  'Mrs. 
Crombie  for  having  rescued  them  from  that 
dreadful  hotel,  and  she  hoped  they  had  not 
been  too  much  trouble  to  her.  She  must  let 
them  pay  her  back  for  it  somehow. 

Lillias  was  the  last  to  receive  her  adieux, 
and  she  told  the  girl  she  had  purposely  kept 
her  for  the  last.  "What  shall  I  say  to  you, 
my  dear?"  she  asked,  from  the  sunny  sum 
mit  of  her  matronly  felicity.  "I  wish  you 
very,  very  happy,  as  the  nice  old  phrase  is. 
I  wish  you  as  happy  as  Arthur  and  I  are  go 
ing  to  be,  for  our  honeymoon  is  just  beginning 
over  again.  It  seems  a  little  selfish  for  us  to 
be  taking  it  before  you  have  yours,  but  I 
suppose  it  can't  be  helped."  She  was  cling 
ing  to  the  girl's  hand,  and  fondly  bending  her 
eyes  upon  her  from  this  slant  of  the  head  and 
from  that,  and  now  she  humbly  entreated, 
"May  I  kiss  you?" 

Lillias  did  not  say,  but  perhaps  she  in 
clined  her  cheek  a  little.    At  any  rate,  she  did 
172 


Miss   Bellard's   Inspiration 

not  forbid  the  endearment,  and  Mrs.  Mevi- 
son  bestowed  it. 

"There!"  she  cried.  " That's  for  good 
luck.  Come,  Arthur,  dear !  Good  -  bye,  all ! 
Oh!  Why,  Mr.  Craybourne!"  she  called  to 
the  young  man  as  he  came  round  the  corner 
of  the  house.  "  Just  in  time  for  hail  and  fare 
well  !' '  She  ran  and  seized  his  hand.  ' *  Good 
bye!  good-bye!"  she  cried,  and  she  added  in 
a  stage  whisper,  for  every  one  to  hear,  "  Be 
good  to  that  sweet  girl!" 

The  carriage  whirled  her  and  Mevison 
away,  but  before  it  had  traced  the  gravelled 
curve  in  front  of  the  cottage  Mrs.  Crombie 
burst  out  with,  "  Treacherous,  false,  hypo 
critical,  disagreeable  woman!"  in  a  diminu 
endo  which  seemed  to  do  so  little  justice  to 
the  case  that  Crombie  threw  his  arms  des 
perately  into  the  air  and  went  in-doors  with 
out  a  word. 

UI  don't  know,"  Lillias  said,  continuing 
to  rub  with  her  handkerchief  at  the  cheek 


Miss  Bollard's   Inspiration 

which  Mrs.  Mevison  had  kissed,  and  staring 
after  the  carriage  in  a  blank  forgetfulness  of 
Craybourne,  who  stood  submissively  by  in 
expectation  of  her  return  to  herself. 

"  Lillias!"  her  aunt  cried. 

"She's  disagreeable,  but  you  can't  say 
she's  insincere.  She's  shown  out  the  worst 
that's  in  her,  but  can  we  be  sure  that  he 
has?" 

"Well,  Lillias!  After  the  rude  way  she 
behaved  to  you  from  the  beginning!" 

"I  like  to  be  just,  Aunt  Hester." 

"Well,  /  can't  make  you  out.  Can  you, 
Mr.  Craybourne?" 

Craybourne  smiled.  "Whenever  I  can't, 
I  trust  to  a  period  of  unconscious  cerebra 
tion." 

The  girl  looked  at  him  with  sudden  won 
der  in  her  fine  eyes  and  some  apparent 
doubt. 

"  Well,"  Mrs.  Crombie  said,  "I'm  glad  she's 
out  of  the  house,  anyway,"  and  she  added, 
174 


Miss  Bellard's   Inspiration 

"  What  would  you  poor  things  like  for  lunch 
eon?" 

"Oh,  anything,  Aunt  Hester.  Or  noth 
ing."  Lillias  turned  distractedly  to  Cray- 
bourne.  "  I  want  you,  Edmund.  Aunt  Hes 
ter,  excuse  us  a  moment.  I  want  to  speak 
to  Mr.  Craybourne.  No,  no!"  she  said. 
"Don't  go  in!  I'll  take  him  down  to  the 
river.  Come,  Mr.  Craybourne." 

She  left  Mrs.  Crombie  looking  after  them 
as  she  led  the  way  with  Craybourne,  swiftly 
swooping  over  the  slope  of  the  meadow,  with 
her  light  skirt  lifted  before  her  and  swirling 
in  a  fine  eddy  behind  her. 

She  did  not  pause  for  the  important  talk 
which  he  felt  impending  till  they  reached 
that  point  of  the  river  where  they  had  sat 
the  day  before  and  thrown  sticks  into  the 
stream  and  played  the  fool  so  gladly.  Then 
she  panted,  "  You  see  it  won't  do,  Edmund." 

He  was  not  the  sort  of  man  to  repeat  her 
words  in  idle  question ;  he  sat  silently  down, 
175 


Miss  Bellard's  Inspiration 

and,  with  his  kind,  intelligent  looks  bent  on 
her,  let  her  go  on. 

"I  am  too  much  like  her.  I  have  been 
feeling  it  more  and  more ;  and  unless  you  can 
prove  to  me  that  there  is  some  vital  differ 
ence,  so  that,  under  the  same  conditions,  I 
should  behave  otherwise,  it  had  better  be 
off,  and  the  sooner  the  better.  I  would 
rather  be  dead  than  treat  you  as  she  treated 
him,  and  much  rather  you  would  be  dead 
than  have  you  treat  me  as  he  treated  her.  I 
couldn't  stand  it  for  a  moment,  and  I 
shouldn't  respect  you  if  you  could." 

Craybourne  gave  himself  an  interval  of 
thoughtful  silence  before  he  asked,  "  Aren't 
you  taking  it  rather  too  much  for  granted 
that  you  are  like  her?  I  don't  see  the  least 
resemblance." 

He  had,  certainly  not  with  her  conni 
vance,  but  certainly  not  without  her  con 
sent,  possessed  himself  of  that  hand  of  hers 
which  hung  next  him;  and,  now  finding  it  in 
176 


Miss  Bollard's   Inspiration 

his  clasp,  she  pressed  his  hand  gratefully.  "  I 
don't  mean  in  temperament— 
"And  I  am  sure  not  in  temper!'* 
She  pressed  his  hand  again,  and  smiled 
sidelong  up  at  him.  Then  as  he  folded  him 
self  down  on  the  bank,  she  could  not  well 
keep  standing,  and,  besides,  she  thought  she 
could  think  better  sitting.  "I  don't  mean 
in  temper,  either ;  at  least,  I  should  hope  not. 
But,  Edmund,  that  has  nothing  to  do  with 
the  kind  of  resemblance  I  had  in  mind.  I 
am  too  much  like  her  in  being  too  much  in 
love." 

She  looked  anxiously  at  him,  and  as  he  had 
the  instinct,  rare  among  men,   of  knowing 
when  not  to  laugh  at  a  woman's  seriousness, 
he  did  not  even  smile,  and  she  went  on: 
"  I  should  ask  too  much  of  you— 
"Ah,  that,"  he  broke  in,  "you  could  not 
do.     You    couldn't    ask    anything    that    I 
wouldn't  gladly  do." 

"That  is  just  what  I  should  answer  you, 
177 


Miss  Bellard's   Inspiration 

if  you  had  said  what  I  said;  and  that  con 
vinces  me  that  it  is  quite  as  bad  as  I  sup 
posed,  if  not  worse.  We  are  both  too  much 
in  love." 

He  was  as  serious  as  she  in  replying,  "Do 
you  mean  that  people  who  are  very  much  in 
love  had  better  not  marry?" 

"That  is  what  I  mean.  It  is  dangerous; 
it's  madness  to  do  so." 

"I've  sometimes  vaguely  felt  it.  But — 
Go  on,  Lillias." 

She  took  her  hand  from  him,  observing, 
"If  we  kept  that  up,  we  never  could  talk 
sensibly,  and  I  wish  to  talk  sensibly." 

"I'm  afraid  there's  something  in  what  you 
say,"  he  sighed. 

"  Besides,  this  may  be  the  beginning  of  the 
end,  and  we  had  better  commence  at  once." 

"What  do  you  mean?" 

"  I  haven't  come  to  that,  yet.  But  there 
is  something — and  it's  the  great  thing,  that 
I'm  sure  of — and  that  is  that  if  we're  mar- 


Miss  Bellard's   Inspiration 

rying  for  love,  we're  making  a  mistake,  and 
the  more  love  the  more  mistake.  We  ought 
to  marry  dispassionately." 

"I  don't  know  that  I  should  go  so  far  as 
that,"  he  said,  with  the  fine  reasonableness 
which  she  had  early  told  him  was  his  greatest 
charm.  "  But  I  certainly  agree  with  you 
that  love  alone  isn't  a  sufficient  motive.  I 
always  supposed,"  he  continued,  with  an  in 
trospective  air,  "that  there  was  something 
besides  love  in  our  case.  I  thought  there  was 
a  sense  of  character,  an  intellectual  reciproc 
ity,  a  mutual  respect — 

"  Yes,"  she  said,  "there's  no  denying  that, 
and  that's  just  what  makes  the  love  so  dan 
gerous.  It's  the  mixture." 

"Why,"  he  argued,  "you  don't  mean  to 
say  that  there  oughtn't  to  be  any  love?" 

"  No,  I  don't  mean  that,  quite.  It  would 
be  repulsive  if  there  were  no  love.  To  marry 
for  reason  would  be  almost  as  bad  as  to  marry 
for  money." 

179 


Miss  BellarcPs    Inspiration 

"  Then  what  do  you  think  people  ought  to 
marry  for?" 

After  a  moment  of  sad  reflection  she  said, 
"I'm  not  sure  that  they  ought  to  marry  at 
all." 

"Lillias!" 

"  Of  course,  I  don't  mean  that,  either,  quite. 
But  after  hearing  what  we've  heard,  and  see 
ing  what  we've  seen,  all  in  a  supposed  union 
of  hearts  and  hands  that  didn't  admit  any 
thing  of  the  kind  to  the  world— 

"  But  why  need  we  think  that  our  mar 
riage  would  be  like  that?" 

"How  do  we  know  but  all  marriages  are 
like  that?" 

"I'm  sure  they're  not.  There  are  your 
aunt  and  uncle:  why  shouldn't  we  be  like 
them  in  our  marriage?" 

Lillias  gave  a  fine,  small  shrug.  "  My 
aunt  and  uncle  are  ridiculous.  Would  you 
like  to  be  like  them?  Darby  and  Joan  are 
not  my  ideal." 

1 80 


Miss    Bellard's    Inspiration 

"  I  don't  think  Darby  and  Joan  are  so  bad 
when  you  get  to  their  time  of  life.  People 
come  to  Darby  and  Joan  because  they  are 
good,  I  suppose,  and  kind  to  each  other,  and 
patient,  and  all  that." 

"Yes,  but  it  may  be  the  peace  of  exhaus 
tion.  They've  simply  fought  to  a  finish." 

''Well,  my  dear—  Or  perhaps  you  don't 
wish  me  to  call  you  my  dear?" 

"You  can  call  me  so,  provisionally." 

"Thank  you.  Then,  Lillias,  I  should  like 
to  know  what  you  think  was  the  attraction 
that  brought  us  together,  to  begin  with?" 

"I  don't  know.  Love,  I  suppose.  At 
least,  it  was  in  my  case." 

"It  wasn't  in  mine." 

"  It  wasn't  in  yours!"  She  looked  at  him 
with  the  notion  that  he  must  be  joking. 
But  besides  his  being  an  Englishman,  of  whom 
joking  could  not  always  be  predicated,  espe 
cially  on  serious  subjects,  she  saw  that  in  this 
instance  he  was  particularly  in  earnest.  "I 
181 


Miss   Bellard's   Inspiration 

should  like  to  know  what  it  was,  then!"  she 
said,  rather  indignantly. 

"  It  was  interest  in  an  experiment  that  had 
my  respect.  It  was  what  you  were  doing, 
not  what  you  were,  that  attracted  me." 

"Oh,  indeed!" 

"Yes." 

"And  may  I  ask  what  retained  your  in 
terest?" 

"  It  was  you,  your  charming  and  adorable 
self.  But  the  sense  of  that  certainly  came 
second  and  not  first.  Ah!  I  see  I  have 
wounded  you." 

"Not  at  all.  I  like  what  you  have  told 
me.  It  restores  my  self-respect.  But  it  shows 
me  that  men  never  can  understand  women. 
When  all  is  said  and  done,  we  are  of  different 
natures." 

Craybourne  laughed  joyfully.  "  Now  that 
is  such  an  American  way  of  putting  it.  So 
delightful,  so  mystical!" 

"And  that  is  such  an  English  way  of 
182 


Miss  Bellard's   Inspiration 

recognizing  the  fact.  Yes,  Mr.  Craybourne," 
the  girl  said,  getting  unexpectedly  to  her 
feet,  "we  are  not  only  of  different  natures, 
but  different  races." 

"I  always  supposed  the  Americans  and 
English  were  of  the  same  race — the  Anglo- 
Saxon  race.  Or  if  you  won't  allow  that,we're 
certainly  of  the  same  human  race." 

"  I'm  not  joking,  Mr.  Craybourne,  as  you 
seem  to  think.  I  see  that  we  have 
never  understood  each  other,  and  never 
can." 

"I  think  we  can.  But  why  'Mr.  Cray- 
bourne,'  Lillias?" 

"  Because  I  think  it  had  better  come  to  it 
at  once." 

"The—" 

"  Parting,  yes." 

He  turned  very  white,  very  suddenly,  so 
that  she  entreated,  "Don't  do  that!" 

"  It  isn't  a  thing  I  can  help,  quite.    Lillias, 
why  should  we  part?" 
13  183 


Miss  Bellard's   Inspiration 

"  You  have  the  same  as  told  me  you  don't 
love  me— 

"  No,  dearest — or  Miss  Bellard,  I  mean — I 
said  I  didn't  love  you  at  first.  And  you  had 
been  saying  that  we  oughtn't  to  love  each 
other." 

"Then  you  were  deceiving  me?" 

He  looked  a  magnanimous  reproach  at  her 
unreasonableness,  her  unfairness,  and  she  was 
ashamed.  She  took  up  a  stitch  she  had 
dropped. 

"  I  could  see  that  all  along  you  didn't  care 
for  me  primarily  as  a  woman.  I  piqued  you 
and  puzzled  you  as  an  American.  I  could 
see  that  you  were  always  trying  to  make  me 
out.  And  that  was  very  offensive." 

"  I  am  sorry  that  I  was  offensive,  but  cer 
tainly  you  did  pique  and  puzzle  me,  not  only 
as  a  woman  but  as  an  American.  Perhaps 
I  piqued  and  puzzled  you  as  an  Englishman?" 

"  Not  a  bit.     You  were  so  much  of  a  man 
that  I  could  see  through  you  instantly." 
184 


Miss  BeUard's   Inspiration 

"I  don't  know  what  you  mean  by  that/' 
"It  doesn't  matter.  It's  quite  enough 
that  we  know  our  own  minds  at  last.  Our 
marriage  would  be  unhappy  because  we  are 
so  hopelessly  different,  in  nature,  in  nation 
ality,  in  everything.  I  love  you  and  I  al 
ways  shall — " 

"And  I  you,  Lillias,  as  long  as  I  live." 
"  That  is  very  sweet  of  you,  Edmund.  But 
we  have  had  our  lesson  in  those  wretched 
people,  and  we  had  better  heed  it.  You  see 
yourself,  dearest,  that  we  could  never  remain 
united!" 

"I  don't  see  why  we  shouldn't  try." 
"  Yes,  dearest,  you  do.  We  can  break  now, 
and  the  cleavage  would  be  absolute ;  but  if 
we  were  married  and  broke  there  would  be 
all  sorts  of  pieces.  We  have  never  had  the 
least  sign  of  a  quarrel." 

Craybourne  was  silent,  perhaps  absently, 
and  she  went  on : 

'  'And  I  determined  from  the  first  moment — ' ' 
185 


Miss  Bollard's   Inspiration 

"When  was  the  first  moment?" 
"  Why,  I  suppose  it  was  the  glimpse  of  you 
I  caught  that  first  day  I  saw  you  coming  in 
to  hear  my  lecture.  I  thought  you  were  very 
distinguished,  and  I — well,  I  was  taken  with 
you.  It  began  then." 

"Did    it,    really?     How    intoxicating!     I 
never  knew  that,  Lillias." 

"We've  never  talked  out  fully,  yet." 
"Then  suppose  we  do  it  now." 
"  No,  there  isn't  time,  now.     It's  too  late," 
she  sighed. 

"Oh,  don't  say  that,  dearest!" 
"  Yes,  it's  too  late.    According  to  what  you 
say,  you  were  not  at  all  impressed  so  soon." 
"Impressed?" 

"Taken  with  me — it's  the  same  thing." 

"No,"  he  owned,  "I  can't  honestly  say  I 

was."     Then  he  explained,  "  But  I  was  taken 

with  the  idea  of  you,  or  what  you  were  doing. 

I've  always  fancied  women  leading  men  in 

thought,  you  know;  they're  naturally  our 

1 86 


Miss  Bellard's   Inspiration 

teachers.  That  sort  of  women  were  my 
heroines:  Hypatia,  and  those  two  women 
who  were  university  professors  at  Bologna, 
and  the  one  at  Padua;  I  don't  remember 
their  names;  and  when  I  heard,  out  there, 
that  there  was  a  woman  lecturing  to  the 
students,  of  course  I  was  taken — with  the 
idea.  I  have  always  fancied  intellectual 
women.  I  think  they're  peculiarly  lovable. 
I  dare  say  it's  rather  odd ;  a  sort  of  taste  for 
olives — " 

Lillias  remained  gravely  looking  at  him. 
Now,  at  the  break  in  his  continuity,  she  said, 
aloud,  but  as  if  to  herself,  "  How  ecstatically 
offensive!" 

He  stared  blankly  at  her. 

"Then  I  am — olives!"  she  explained. 

"In  the  highest  sense — well,  yes." 

"And  I  thought  perhaps  that  I  was  roses, 
or  violets,  or  lilies,  poor  fool!" 

"Don't  take  it  in  that  way,  dearest!  I 
supposed  it  would  please  you  to  know — " 


Miss  Bellard's   Inspiration 

"Please  me!" 

He  gazed  at  her  in  a  perplexity  of  such 
childlike  simplicity  that  she  could  not  help 
a  very  miserable  laugh .  ' '  Really,  Edmund, ' ' 
she  said,  as  she  turned  and  began  to  move 
homeward,  "you  beat  the  band.  Now, 
don't,"  she  added,  angrily,  "  ask  me  just  what 
I  mean  by  beating  the  band.  Any  American 
idiot  would  know  that." 

She  swept  forward  so  swiftly  that  though 
he  easily  kept  up  with  her,  in  his  long,  lank 
stride,  his  stride  was  quicker  than  usual. 
"Will  you  listen  to  me,  Lillias?" 

"No,  I  will  not  listen  to  you.  I  have 
heard  too  much  already."  She  stopped  as 
suddenly  as  she  had  started,  and  fixed  him 
with  scornful  defiance.  "  I  dare  say  that  if 
we  were  married,  and  quarrelling,  this  is  the 
point  where  you  would  call  me  a  stubborn 
little  fool." 

"Oh,  that  abominable  woman!"  he  groan 
ed.     "She  has  poisoned  our  love." 
188 


Miss  Bellard's   Inspiration 

"Our  love  for  olives?  Our  peculiar  pas 
sion  for  intellectual  women?" 

"  You  are  cruel,  Lillias,  to  take  what  I  said 
in  that  way." 

"You  were  cruel  to  say  what  I  couldn't 
take  in  any  other  way." 

"Then  have  patience  with  me  for  express 
ing  myself  badly!  For  Heaven's  sake  don't 
let  us  quarrel!" 

"Who  is  quarrelling?"  she  demanded. 

"I  mean,  let  us  be  reasonable.  You 
have  always  wished  me  to  regard  our 
affair  dispassionately,  and  now  you  are 
giving  way  to  a  very  mistaken  feel- 
ing—" 

"  I  am  not  giving  way  to  any  sort  of  feeling ! 
You  are  worse  and  worse." 

"  Oh,"  he  said,  sadly,  "  I  do  seem  to  roil  the 
water  somehow,  whether  I  stand  up-stream 
from  you  or  down." 

"  Poor  lamb!"  she  retorted,  contemptuous 
ly.  Then,  after  a  few  steps,  she  stopped 
189 


Miss  Bellard's  Inspiration 

again  and  challenged  him:  "And  I  am  the 
wolf,  I  suppose!" 

"  Do  you  think  it  fair  to  accuse  me  of  call 
ing  you  a  wolf?" 

"  You  insinuate  that  I  am  unjust  to  you, 
when  you  know  that  I  am  the  soul  of  jus 
tice!" 

"  I  insinuate  nothing,  my  dear.  But  I  see 
that  you  are  determined  to  break  with  me." 

"Break  with  you?  What  is  there  left  to 
break,  I  should  like  to  know,  after  what  has 
passed  between  us?" 

"Very  little,  I'm  afraid,"  he  answered, 
with  dignity.  "  And  you  are  quite  right.  I 
accuse  you  of  nothing ;  I  take  all  the  blame 
to  myself  for  the  beastly  row  that  I  should 
never  have  believed  we  would  come  to." 

She  stared  at  him,  and  the  heat  went  out 
of  her  face,  and  a  light  of  intelligence  came 
into  it,  which  was  also  consternation.  "  Yes, 
it  is  a  beastly  row,  as  you  say,  Edmund,"  she 
owned,  with  the  frankness  on  which  she 
190 


Miss   Bellard's   Inspiration 

prided  herself.  "  It  seems  that  we  can't  even 
part  without  quarrelling.  Who  would  have 
dreamt  it!  And  I  meant  that  it  should  all 
be  with  such  dignity,  such  self-respect,  such 
consideration  for  each  other!  Oh,  it  isn't  at 
all  as  I  meant  it  to  be !  It's  as  bad  as  if  we 
were  married  already.  But  you  see,  dear 
est,  don't  you,  that  we  must  part  now? 
Doesn't  it  show  you  that  we  are  not  suited 
to  each  other?  That  I  was  perfectly  right? 
Oh,  dearest,  how  can  you  ever  forgive 
me?" 

She  looked  at  him  so  tenderly,  so  ruefully, 
that  he  could  not  forbear  giving  her  an  ob 
ject-lesson  in  forgiveness.  The  spot  was  se 
cluded  and  convenient  for  the  purpose,  and 
he  took  her  in  his  arms  and  laid  her  head  on 
his  breast,  and  she  lingered  for  a  moment  in 
his  embrace,  as  if  gathering  strength  from  it 
for  the  ordeal  before  her.  Then  she  gently 
repulsed  him  and  wiped  from  her  eyes  the 
tears  which  had  accompanied  her  self-analy- 
191 


Miss  Bellard's   Inspiration 

sis  from  the  point  where  it  began  to  break  in 
self-condemnation . 

"Now,"  she  said,  "this  is  the  end." 

He  seemed  surprised  at  her  announce 
ment,  as  if  he  had  supposed  it  were  rather  the 
beginning,  but  he  had  apparently  not  the 
courage  to  protest. 

"We  are  parting,"  she  continued,  "not 
because  we  have  quarrelled  and  are  mad  at 
each  other,  like  two  fractious  children  - 
though  it  nearly  came  to  that — with  me,  at 
least ;  you  are  always  divine — but  because  our 
reason  is  convinced  that  it  is  best ;  that  we 
are  not  fit  for  each  other,  or  at  least  I  am 
not;  and  that  if  we  married,  we  should  go 
on  squabbling  to  the  bitter  end.  Oh,  I  am 
glad  that  it  has  turned  out  as  it  has,  and 
that  I  have  shown  you  what  an  unreason 
able  and  impossible  person  I  am,  in  time. 
So,  good-bye,  dear— 

"Don't  you  think,"  he  inquired,  very  def 
erentially,  "that  it  would  be  more,  well,  be- 
192 


Miss  Bellard's   Inspiration 

coming,  if  I  were  to  go  back  to  the  house 
with  you,  and— 

"Not  for  worlds!  Why  should  you  want 
to?" 

"Merely  for  the  effect  with  your  family. 

I  think  it's  due  to  them  that  I  should  say 

—that  I  should  formalize  our  position,  that  I 

shouldn't  seem  to  run  away,  or  have  been 

driven  away— 

"  I  see  what  you  mean,  but  I  don't  believe 
it's  necessary,  indeed  I  don't,  dearest.  If  I 
did—" 

"  I  went  to  your  uncle  when  we  first  came 
here,  and  had  it  all  out  with  him,  and  re 
ceived  his  approval  of  my  remaining,  and 
now  I  think  I  ought  to  notify  him  of  the  con 
clusion  we've  come  to." 

"Yes,  there's  something  in  that.  But 
Uncle  Archibald  wouldn't  expect  it.  He 
wouldn't  feel  that  it  was  due  to  him." 

"  I'm  not  sure  that  I  don't  feel  it  due  to 
myself, ' '  Craybourne  said,  steadily.  ' '  I  rath- 
193 


Miss  Bellard's  Inspiration 

er  feel  that  it's  my  right  not  to  have  the  ap 
pearance  of  skulking  off." 

" Oh,  no  one  would  dream  of  that!  I  can 
explain  it  to  Uncle  Archibald  and  to  Aunt 
Hester  both.  You  needn't  be  troubled. 
You  may  be  sure  that  I  won't  let  you  suffer 
in  their  opinion.  I  shall  take  all  the  blame 
upon  myself.  But  there  is  no  blame!  It's 
simply  the  wisest  and  best  and  kindest  thing 
we  could  do  for  ourselves." 

"Yes,  I  suppose  it  is— 

"Oh,  it  is!  And  now  don't  come  a  step 
farther!  No!"  The  last  word  was  accom 
panied  by  a  swift  evasion  of  the  arms  lifted 
towards  her,  and  she  fled  away  from  him  up 
the  meadow  and  over  the  line  where  it  began 
to  be  lawn.  There  she  passed  from  his  sight 
through  a  clump  of  shrubbery,  behind  which 
she  hid,  and  watched  him  standing  motion 
less,  and  then  turning,  and  so  walking  slowly, 
head  down,  a  pathetic  figure,  towards  the 
ferry  at  the  foot  of  the  field, 
194 


XIII 

'ILLIAS  went  to  her  aunt  as  soon 
as  she  got  to  the  house,  and 
found  her,  with  her  spectacles  on, 
doing  some  mending  that  would 
not  admit  the  casual  help  of  eye  -  glasses. 
"Aunt  Hester,"  she  said,  sitting  down  with 
out  waiting  to  be  asked,  "Mr.  Craybourne  is 
not  coming  to  lunch." 

"Not  coming  to  lunch!  Why,  I  have  got 
broilers,  and  strawberry  short — 

"  It  doesn't  matter.  He  probably  couldn't 
eat  a  broiler  as  big  as  a  grasshopper;  at 
least,  I  couldn't.  Or  a  single  bite  of  straw 
berry  short-cake.  We  have  separated." 

She  had  to  endure  having  her  aunt  repeat, 
"Separated?" 

"Yes,  it's  all  off,  and  I  propose  being  off 


Miss  Bellard's  Inspiration 

to-morrow  morning.  My  week  is  up,  and 
the  Mellays  will  be  quite  ready  to  receive  me. 
But  if  they  weren't,  I  should  go,  anyway, 
somewhere,  so  that  I  could  get  away  from 
this  terrible  place  where  I  have  been  so 
happy."  At  this  point  Lillias  put  up  her 
hands  to  her  face  to  hide  the  peculiar  ex 
pression  she  had  noticed  it  always  had  when 
she  was  crying. 

Mrs.  Crombie  had  dropped  her  mending, 
and  she  now  went  on  with  an  exclamatory, 
interrogative,  objurgatory  comment,  until 
Lillias  had  got  through  crying  and  again  took 
up  her  story. 

"  It's  very  nice  of  you  to  say  that  you  can't 
believe  it,  and  all  that;  and  don't  think  I 
don't  appreciate  it.  And  it's  very  sweet  of 
you  to  insist  upon  my  staying,  but  my  plans 
are  made,  and  I  shall  go.  And  I'm  not  cry 
ing  because  I'm  sorry  that  we've  broken,  but 
because  we've  broken  in  such  a  humiliating 
way." 

196 


Miss  Bollard's  Inspiration 

"I  don't  see,"  her  aunt  ventured,  "what 
you  mean  by  humiliating,  or  what  difference 
it  makes  how  you  break,  so  long  as  you 
break." 

"It  makes  all  the  difference  in  the  world 
when  you  have  your  ideal  of  breaking ;  and  if 
you  intend  to  do  it  with  dignity,  and  carry 
conviction  by  reasoning  it  out,  and  the  first 
thing  you  know  you  are  trying  to  quarrel,  it 
is  humiliating.  For  the  time  being  I  felt  just 
like  Mrs.  Mevison." 

"I  should  have  supposed,"  Mrs.  Crombie 
said,  very  stupidly,  as  Lillias  thought,  "that 
if  she  occurred  to  you  in  any  sort  of  way,  it 
would  have  stopped  you  in  your  mad  career." 

"  It  was  she  that  started  me  in  my  mad 
career.  It  was  seeing  what  marriage  could 
come  to  with  no  end  of  love,  and — and — es 
teem,  that  gave  me  pause,  and  made  me  re 
solve  to  break  with  Edmund  before  it  came 
to  the  sin  and  shame  of  such  squabbling  as 
went  on  with  the  Mevisons  here.  I  reasoned 
197 


Miss  Bellard's  Inspiration 

it  out  perfectly,  to  myself,  and  I  had  just  the 
expressions  in  my  mind  that  would  have  left 
him  without  a  word  to  say  against  it,  when 
something  he  said  before  I  could  come  to 
them  started  me  off  in  another  direction, 
and  I  was  scolding  and  upbraiding  him  be 
fore  I  knew  it,  just  like  Mrs.  Mevison.  But, 
thank  Heaven !  that  was  convincing,  anyway ; 
and  no  matter  what  he  thinks  of  my  argu 
ments,  and  considers  me  a  wilful,  capricious 
child,  he  must  be  glad  he's  well  out  of  it.  / 
certainly  am.  But  what,"  Lillias  demanded, 
with  spirit,  "makes  you  call  it  my  mad  ca 
reer,  Aunt  Hester?  Of  course  I  know  that 
you're  my  mother's  sister,  and  all  that,  but 
I'm  used  to  taking  care  of  myself,  and  I 
don't  think  that  as  your  guest  I  ought  ex 
actly  to  be  called  insane." 

"I  didn't  mean  that,  Lillias.  It  was  not 
the  word  I  meant  to  use.  I'm  sure  nobody 
could  consider  you  more  sane  than  I  do. 
But—" 

198 


Miss   Bellard's   Inspiration 

"  But  what?  If  you  didn't  mean  insanity 
by  mad  career,  what  do  you  mean?" 

"  Why,  I  mean  that  you've  thrown  away  a 
great  chance." 

"The  chance  to  get  married?  I  can  get 
along  perfectly  well  without  being  married. 
What  great  chance  have  I  thrown  away?" 

"The  chance  of  being  married  to  such  a 
man  as  Mr.  Craybourne,"  Mrs.  Crombie  said, 
and  she  took  back  her  mending  into  her  lap 
again. 

Lillias  hesitated ;  perhaps  she  felt  that  there 
was  reason  in  what  her  aunt  suggested ;  but 
with  a  little  spitefulness  she  asked,  "What  is 
so  very  remarkable  about  Mr.  Craybourne,  I 
should  like  to  know?" 

"Well,  he  is  very  unlike  you,  Lillias." 

"Oh,  thank  you!     Is  that  such  a  merit?" 

Mrs.  Crombie  was  on  the  track  of  a  rea 
son,  and  she  was  not  to  be  put  off  the 
scent. 

"  He  is  an  Englishman,  and  you  would  in- 
14  199 


Miss  Bellard's   Inspiration 

terest  him  as  long  as  you  lived.  An  Ameri 
can  wouldn't  be  interested  in  you  half  so 
long.  You  would  be  just  like  a  lot  of  other 
girls  to  him;  like  most  of  the  other  girls  he 
had  seen.  But  an  Englishman  is  different. 
He  has  never  seen  any  other  girls  like  you— 
girls  let  loose,  as  it  were — and  he'd  be  always 
puzzling  over  you,  and  trying  to  make  you 
out." 

"Now,  Aunt  Hester,  you  have  touched 
upon  the  very  point  that  has  been  troubling 
me,  and  that  I  couldn't  get  at — like  a  pin 
somewhere.  I  don't  think  it's  at  all  nice  to 
have  a  man  interested  in  you  because  you 
puzzle  him ;  and  in  this  case  I  don't  think  it 
would  be  fair  to  Edmund.  I  should  be  an 
imposition.  But  that  isn't  what  I  am  getting 
at.  Please  go  on." 

The  Old  Woman  in  Mrs.  Crombie  felt  some 
what  baffled  at  the  New  Woman  in  Lillias, 
whom  she  vaguely  suspected  to  be  her  spir 
itual  as  well  as  her  intellectual  superior ;  but 
200 


Miss   Bellard's   Inspiration 

in  her  belated  way,  she  tried  to  go  on.  "  He 
is  not  only  an  Englishman — whether  you 
think  it's  an  advantage  or  not  to  have  your 
husband  always  interested  in  you ;  some  girls 
would,  I  know — but  he  is  a  very  good  man. 
Any  one  can  see  that  he's  good  by  looking  at 
him.  I  know  he's  rather  romantic,  but  as 
long  as  he's  romantic  about  you,  I  don't 
think  that's  any  great  fault." 

"It  is  in  a  lover,"  Lillias  interpolated. 

"Then  it  isn't  in  a  husband.  They  make 
the  happiest  kind  of  wives.  I've  seen  it." 

Lillias  wondered  if  this  meant  her  uncle, 
but  she  merely  said,  "Well,  go  on." 

"And  he  is  very  intelligent.  He  is  culti 
vated.  He  knows  a  great  deal  more  than 
most  American  men.  He's  read  more,  and 
thought  more.  He  isn't  merely  a  business 
man." 

"No,  he  certainly  isn't  a  business  man, 
poor  fellow,"  Lillias  noted,  "or  he  wouldn't 
have  made  such  a  mess  of  his  ranching." 
201 


Miss  Bellard's  Inspiration 

"And  no  matter  how  high  you  went  in 
tellectually,  he  could  follow  you." 

"  Yes,  he  could  even  lead  me ;  and  our  men, 
unless  they  make  a  profession  of  it,  though 
they're  bright  enough,  are  not  intellectual," 
Lillias  reflected.  "Well?" 

"Well,  that's  all,  I  think.  I  suppose  that 
once  we  should  have  considered  whether  he 
was  religious  or  not ;  but  the  world  has  got  tc 
the  pass  where  we  don't  consider  that  any 
more,  when  a  man  is  good,  and  kind,  and 
truthful,  and  fond  of  you.  And  so  I  say  you 
have  thrown  a  pearl  away." 

The  girl  was  silent,  passing  her  hand  across 
her  lap,  and  looking  down  at  it  in  its  passage. 
Then,  "I  know  it,  Aunt  Hester,"  she  said, 
"and  it's  just  because  he's  a  pearl  that  I've 
thrown  him  away — or  it's  as  much  that  as 
anything.  If  he  were  less  of  a  pearl  I  might 
have  kept  him." 

"I  can't  make  you  out,  Lillias." 

"  Why,  it  seems  to  me  that  I'm  very  clear. 
202 


Miss   Bollard's   Inspiration 

We  should  have  fought  like  cats  and  dogs,  or 
Mevisons,  not  because  he  wanted  to,  but  be 
cause  I  did.  I  should  have  made  him  do  it, 
too.  I  couldn't  have  helped  it.  I'm  so 
wrapped  up  in  him,  he's  so  all  this  world  and 
the  next  to  me  that  I  couldn't  have  borne  to 
have  anybody  else  have  the  least  look  of  him. 
I  should  have  worried  his  life  out  of  him.  I 
saw  it  in  time,  and  I  stopped  it.  That's  all. 
And  the  only  regret  I  have  is  that  I  couldn't 
convince  him  of  the  fact  without  giving  him 
an  illustration.  Well!"  she  rose  with  a 
quick  sigh.  "  I  suppose  you  will  have  to  tell 
uncle?" 

"  Shouldn't  you  wish  him  to  know?  Don't 
you  think  it's  his  due?" 

"Well,  not  perhaps  till  I  get  out  of  the 
house.  I  shall  go  the  first  train  in  the  morn 
ing.  Do  you  think  you  could  keep  it  till 
then?" 

"  If  you  very  much  wish  it,"  Mrs.  Crombie 
said,  with  gravity  bordering  on  offence. 
203 


Miss  Bollard's   Inspiration 

"I  do.  And  don't  be  vexed,  Aunt  Hes 
ter!" 

"Oh  no!" 

"I  think  I  should  like  to  write  to  uncle 
about  it.  I  believe  he  would  understand. 
I'll  write  as  quick  as  I  get  to  the  Mellays'. 
Could  you  wait  till  then?" 

Mrs.  Crombie  promised.  "  Yes,  I  will  wait 
till  you  can  write  to  him." 

"Thank  you,  Aunt  Hester." 

Mrs.  Crombie  looked  after  her  as  she  left 
the  room,  not  less  baffled  by  her  behavior 
about  her  uncle  than  by  her  behavior  to  her 
lover.  Lillias  immediately  returned.  "I 
don't  think  I  shall  stay  with  the  Mellays 
long.  I  believe  I  shall  go  back  almost  im 
mediately." 

"Out  there?" 

"  Yes.     They  wanted  me  to  go  on  with  my 

work,  and  now  I  should  like  to  do  so.     It  will 

be  something  to  do.     And  I  like  it.     I  will 

write  to  the  president,  and  when  I  hear  from 

204 


Miss  Bellard's   Inspiration 

him  I  will  go  out  there  and  begin  preparing 
my  lectures  for  the  fall  term." 

"Well,  you  know  what  is  best  for  you, 
Lillias." 

"I  used  to  think  so,"  the  girl  said,  sadly, 
and  again  she  closed  the  door  upon  herself. 

That  afternoon,  in  default  of  anything  else 
to  say,  Lillias  having  assigned  a  headache  as 
her  reason  for  not  wishing  to  be  provided  for 
in  any  way,  Crombie  and  his  wife  went  on  one 
of  their  drives.  When  they  came  back  the 
girl  could  see  by  their  looks  of  aggressive 
guiltlessness  that  her  aunt  had  been  telling 
her  uncle  everything.  This  was  not  unex 
pected  to  her,  and  Crombie  was  so  openly 
embarrassed  by  the  burden  of  the  deceit  im 
posed  upon  him,  that  she  was  fairly  well 
amused  by  the  spectacle,  and  she  did  not 
blame  her  aunt. 

That  night  when  Mrs.  Crombie  came  in  to 
help  her  with  the  last  touches  of  her  packing, 
or  to  offer  help,  she  said,  with  a  joyless  laugh, 
205 


Miss  Bellard's    Inspiration 

"We  had  better  not  have  any  concealments, 
Aunt  Hester,  and  I  won't  pretend  I  don't 
know  you've  been  telling  uncle.  I  had  no 
right  to  ask  you  not." 

"  Oh  yes,  you  had,"  her  aunt  nobly  pro 
tested.  "And  I  really  didn't  expect  to  tell 
him.  But  I  was  so  droopy  that  he  noticed  it, 
and  then  I  had  to  tell  him.  We  never  keep 
anything  from  each  other." 

"  No,  and  that  is  right.  It  is  something  I 
can  never  say  of  Edmund  and  myself,  now." 

"Oh  yes,  you  can.  That  will  all  come 
right  again.  You  are  both  so  wise  and  sensi 
ble  that  I  don't  believe  you'll  let  a  little  scare 
like  those  Mevisons  spoil  your  lives." 

"  It's  because  we  are  so  wise  and  sensible 
that  we  shall." 

Lillias  was  leaning  over  her  trunk  with  her 
hand  stayed  upon  the  lifted  lid,  and  looking 
absently  down  at  the  freshly  done-up  shirt 
waists  in  the  top  of  it.  Some  sudden  tears 
ran  down  her  face  and  dropped  on  the  shirt- 
206 


Miss    Bellard's    Inspiration 

waists.  Her  aunt  rose  from  where  she  was 
sitting,  and  looked  at  the  splotches  on  the 
shirt-waists. 

"Never  mind,"  she  said.  "If  it  leaves  a 
blister,  you  can  wait  till  you've  had  them 
washed." 


XIV 

(HE  next  afternoon  when  Crom- 
bie  was  napping  in  his  library 
(one  of  the  uses  of  his  library 
was  to  be  napped  in),  he  was 
roused  by  the  titter  of  the  electric  door-bell, 
and  the  maid  brought  in  Craybourne's  card. 
Crombie  was  yet  so  dim  with  sleep  that  he 
looked  at  it  for  some  time  before  he  could 
say ,  with  recognition ,  ' '  Oh ,  send  him  in . "  He 
also  called  through  the  open  door,  "  Come  in, 
Craybourne."  It  had  been  such  a  relief  to 
get  the  Mevisons  out  of  the  house,  and  then 
Lillias  out  of  the  house,  that  he  had  napped 
more  deeply  than  usual,  and  it  was  not  with  a 
reasoned  welcome  that  he  hailed  his  visitor. 
As  far  as  he  could  get  himself  aware  of  him, 
he  realized  that  he  thought  he  had  gone,  too, 
208 


Miss  Bollard's   Inspiration 

and  it  was  something  like  this  he  said  when 
he  stumped  heavily  forward  and  shook  hands 
with  the  young  man  in  appointing  him  a 
chair. 

"  No,"  Craybourne  said,  quietly,  "  I  wished 
to  see  you  before  I  went,  and  I  didn't  wish  to 
come  before  Lillias  had  gone." 

''You  know  she  went  this  morning?" 
"Yes,  I  saw  her  at  the  station." 
It  recurred  to  Crombie  that  Craybourne 
had  seen  Lillias  at  the  station  when  she  came, 
and  his  sense  of  the  coincidence  was  embar 
rassed  by  the  doubt  he  had  always  had 
whether  Craybourne  had  not  spoken  to  her 
on  that  occasion,  and  they  both  had  decided 
not  to  recognize  the  fact  in  their  very  natural 
surprise  at  meeting  afterwards  under  his  roof. 
Partly  this  kept  him  from  asking  whether 
Craybourne  had  spoken  to  her  on  the  present 
occasion,  and  partly  the  feeling  that  it  would 
be  indelicate.  Craybourne  helped  him  out 
by  saying: 

209 


Miss  Bellard's   Inspiration 

"I  didn't  speak  with  her,  however." 

"Oh,"  Crombie  said. 

"  But  I  wished  to  speak  with  you,  Mr. 
Crombie.  I  had  a  fancy  it  was  your  due, 
somehow,  and  at  any  rate  the  fact  that  I 
came  here  to  talk  with  you  about  Lillias  at 
first  has  controlled  me  so  far  that,  well,  here 
I  am  now.  It  may  be  the  working  of  one  of 
those  odd  subliminal — " 

"Oh,  don't  get  me  on  that  kind  of  thing, 
my  dear  fellow,"  Crombie  interrupted. 
"  Smoke?"  The  young  man  shook  his  head, 
and  Crombie  said,  "Ah,  I  remember,"  and 
lighted  a  pipe  for  himself  Then  he  re 
marked,  as  if  it  were  a  novelty,  "Yes,  she's 
gone,"  and  sighed  in  a  great  wrhiff  of  nicotized 
expansion. 

The  young  man  took  time,  as  if  to  let  the 

fact  sink  in  before  he  said,  "When  I  came 

here  first,  a  week  ago — it  seems  much  longer, 

and  it  seems  no  time  at  all ;  it's  very  strange ! 

—I  came  to  put  myself  frankly  in  your  hands ; 

210 


Miss  Bellard's   Inspiration 

and  if  you  bade  me  go  away  and  not  see  Miss 
Bel — Lillias" — this  new  form  of  her  name 
amused  Crombie  so  that  his  mouth  worked 
round  the  stem  of  his  pipe  in  a  smile  which 
Craybourne  was  far  too  absorbed  in  himself 
to  notice — "  I  was  prepared  to  do  so.  Now 
I  come  prepared,  if  you  say,  to  go  after  her." 

"It's  a  free  country,"  Crombie  said,  with 
a  corner  of  his  eye  on  the  young  man. 

"I  mean,  if  you  think  it's  at  all  worth 
while.  I  don't  pretend  to  be  an  American 
in  these  things,  though  I've  taken  out  my 
first  naturalization  papers." 

"One  has  to  be  more  or  less  born  to  the 
case  of  a  girl  like  Lillias,"  her  uncle  reflected 
for  her  lover's  benefit. 

"That  is  what  I  mean.  You  knew  that 
we  had  broken,  or  rather  that  she  had?" 

Crombie  thought  it  fit  to  say,  "  Mrs.  Crom 
bie  mentioned  something  of  the  kind,"  not 
merely  because  it  comported  best  with  his 
own  dignity  to  give  it  that  casual  turn,  but 

211 


Miss   Bellard's   Inspiration 

because  he  felt  that  it  politely  reduced  the 
fact  to  the  insignificance  it  ought  to  have  in 
Craybourne's  eyes. 

1  'Then  the  question  is,"  the  young  man 
said,  "whether,  from  the  native  American 
point  of  view,  you  not  merely  approve  of  my 
going  after  her,  but  whether  you  think  it 
would  be  at  all  hopeful?" 

Crombie  got  up  for  a  match  to  relight  his 
pipe,  which  he  had  been  letting  go  out.  "  Do 
you  mean  to  the  Mellays'?" 

"Has  she  gone  to  them?  To  be  sure!  I 
was  thinking  she  had  gone  out  there— 

"She's  going,  I  believe,  as  soon  as  she's 
had  her  visit  over  with  the  Mellays.  Excuse 
me,  but  how  did  you  leave  your  affairs  out 
there?" 

"  Oh,  pretty  much  at  sixes  and  sevens,  I'm 
afraid." 

"  So  that  you  would  feel  yourself  jus 
tified  in  going  out  to  look  after  them  a 
little?" 

212 


Miss  Bellard's   Inspiration 

"Entirely." 

Crombie  smoked  a  breath  or  two,  nursing 
the  knee  he  had  taken  between  his  hands  in 
sitting  down  again.  "  It  mightn't  be  a  bad 
idea  for  you  to  be  on  the  ground." 

"On  the  ground?" 

"When  she  gets  there.  I'm  supposing 
you  want  it  on  again?" 

"Decidedly,  I  want  it  on  again!" 

"Then  it  mightn't  be  a  bad  idea,  and  it 
might  be  a  very  bad  idea.  You'd  have  to 
take  the  chances." 

The  young  man  unfolded  himself  to  his 
full  height,  as  if  about  to  take  them  on  the 
instant.  "  Thank  you,  thank  you — 

"  Not  at  all.  Though  I  don't  mind  saying 
that  I  shouldn't  say  this  to  everybody.  But 
I  think  you're  the  man  for  Lillias,  if  there  is 
one.  I  think  you  know  how  to  take  her,  or 
will  know.  She  has  her  ups  and  downs,  and 
she's  been  looking  after  herself  just  long 
enough  to  suppose  that  she  knows  it  all. 
213 


Miss  Bellard's   Inspiration 

But  she  isn't  a  thundering  fool,  like  that 
woman,  Mrs.  Mevison." 

Craybourne  smiled  all  over  hope  and  joy. 
"She  seemed  to  feel  that  we  were  somehow 
entangled  in  their  fate  because  we  were  very 
much  in  love."  He  looked  silly  in  taking 
the  word  on  his  lips,  as  a  man  always  must 
before  another  man,  as  long  as  he  is  in  love. 
"  But  I  don't  see  how  it  follows.  They  quar 
rel  because  they  are  of  the  temperament  for 
it,  not  because  they  are  in  love." 

"There's  a  good  deal  of  sense  in  that." 

"It's  what  I  urged  Lillias  to  consider,  but 
she  seemed  morbid,  and  couldn't  bring  her 
mind  to  it." 

"You'll  have  to  give  her  time.  Perhaps 
she'll  have  brought  her  mind  to  it  by  the 
time  you  meet  out  there.  Women  think 
very  quickly — when  they  do  think.  And 
they  veer  round  like  lightning." 

"They're  very  strange,"  the  young  man 
said,  blissfully. 

214 


Miss  Bollard's   Inspiration 

"  They're  the  devil  and  all  for  strangeness." 

"But  they're  charming!" 

"Some  of  them." 

Craybourne  put  out  his  hand  for  good-bye 
and  Crombie  took  it  in  getting  up.  "  Going? 
I  thought  you  might  like  to  see  Mrs.  Crom 
bie—" 

"  If  it  will  do  any  good?  Otherwise  I  don't 
think  I'll  disturb  her,  if  you  will  make  her 
my  best  compliments,  and  tell  her  how  very 
kind  I  think  she's  been.  But  if  you  think 
I'd  better  see  her— 

"  No,  on  second  thoughts,  better  not.  She 
might  queer  it,  and  I  confess  that  it  won't 
stand  queering,  in  my  judgment.  It's  a  very 
delicate  situation.  Let  it  be  between  us.  I 
hope  it  '11  come  out  all  right,  but  if  it  doesn't 
you  mustn't  blame  me." 

"No,  certainly  not.     I—" 

The  stir  of  garments  made  itself  heard, 
and  Mrs.  Crombie,  who  had  been  standing  it 
as  long  as  she  could,  up-stairs,  after  she  knew 

315 


Miss  Bellard's   Inspiration 

Craybourne  was  in  the  house,  came  in  upon 
the  two  men.  Her  husband  said  to  her  cas 
ually,  while  she  was  greeting  Craybourne, 
"  Mr.  Craybourne  is  going  out  there  to  wind 
up  his  business,  and  I've  been  advising  him 
to  wait  till  Lillias  comes." 

Mrs.  Crombie  seemed  to  have  utterance, 
at  first,  for  no  more  than  a  joyful  "Oh!" 
though  she  made  up  for  it  afterwards,  before 
Craybourne  got  away. 

"Yes,"  Crombie  said,  proud  of  her  ap 
proval,  "  I  couldn't  assure  him  that  it  would 
be  all  peaches  and  cream,  but  I  think  if  they 
meet  again  on  neutral  ground  there's  a  chance 
she  may  feel  differently." 

"Oh,  I'm  sure  there  is!"  Mrs.  Crombie 
breathed  perfervidly.  "Lillias  is  very  rea 
sonable.  She  was  under  the  shadow  of  that 
terrible  woman  here,  and  she  couldn't  get 
away  from  the  idea  that  she  might  somehow 
be  like  her ;  but  I  know  she  won't,  and  that 
she'll  think  so,  too." 

216 


Miss  Bellard's    Inspiration 

"It's  very  curious,  isn't  it?"  Craybourne 
said.  "  It's  a  sort  of  obsession." 

"Yes,  indeed.  All  she  has  got  to  do  is  to 
forget  her,  and  then  she  will  see  everything 
in  its  true  light  again.  Lillias  is  very  gener 
ous.  She  talked  it  over  with  me,  and  I  know 
that  she  has  no  feeling  against  you ;  and  that's 
the  main  thing." 

"The  other  main  thing,"  Crombie  vent 
ured  a  joke,  "is  that  she  still  has  a  feeling 
for  him.  But  that's  what  he's  got  to  find 
out." 

Craybourne  would  not  let  him  have  his 
laugh  alone,  but  Mrs.  Crombie  remained 
grave,  with  her  recurrent  sense  that  Crombie 
was  coarse,  but  her  faith  that  he  was  always 
good  even  when  he  was  coarse.  "  But  Mr. 
Craybourne  is  coming  to  supper,  isn't  he?" 
she  said,  as  if  that  were  relevant. 

"By  supper,"  the  young  man  answered, 
"I  hope  to  be  well  started  on  my  way.     I 
shall  take  the  five-o'clock  train  for  Boston, 
217 


Miss  Bellard's   Inspiration 

and  try  to  catch  a  Western  train  there.  Or 
I  can  go  by  way  of  New  York.  I  feel  that 
everything  depends  upon  my  being  out  there 
somewhat  before  Lillias,  so  as  not  to  have 
the  appearance  of  following  her." 

"  Yes,  she  wouldn't  like  that.  But  if  you 
are  there  that  will  make  all  the  difference." 

"That  is  what  I  think,"  Craybourne  said, 
and  he  and  Mrs.  Crombie  went  on  talking 
it  all  over  again,  and  leaving  Crombie  out 
more  and  more. 

He  was  brought  in  again,  after  the  young 
man  had  taken  the  leave  he  many  times  at 
tempted,  and  Mrs.  Crombie  said  to  him,  re 
proachfully,  "Were  you  going  to  let  him  go, 
Archibald,  without  referring  the  matter  to 
me?" 

"Well,  I  didn't  see  the  use  of  disturbing 
you.  I  thought  you  were  lying  down." 

"And   if  it   hadn't   turned   out  well?     I 
don't  at  all  feel  that  it  will.     Where  would 
you  have  been  then?" 
218 


Miss  Bollard's    Inspiration 

"  Where  I  shall  be  now,  if  it  doesn't  turn 
out  well,  I  suppose.  I  shall  be  responsible 
in  any  event." 

"  I  don't  see  why  you  say  that,  my  dear. 
Lillias  is  my  niece,  and  I  ought  to  have  been 
consulted." 

"Well,  she's  my  niece,  too,  by  marriage, 
just  as  much  as  you  are  my  wife." 

Mrs.  Crombie  looked  baffled  by  his  non 
sense,  as  she  finally  looked  grieved,  but  she 
left  him,  saying,  there  had  been  quarrelling 
enough  in  that  house  for  one  while,  and  that 
if  he  could  laugh  at  such  a  serious  matter 
she  could  not. 

She  forgave  his  offence,  but  it  cannot  be 
said  that  she  entirely  forgot  it  until  she  heard 
from  Lillias,  out  there,  a  few  days  after  her 
arrival.  The  girl  wrote  her  aunt  a  very  long 
letter  and  a  sufficiently  important  letter, 
though  Crombie  professed  to  attach  no  spe 
cial  importance  to  it  up  to  a  certain  point. 

Her  letter  came  at  breakfast,  and  Mrs. 
219 


Miss  Bollard's  Inspiration 

Crombie  read  it  aloud,  mumbling  over  the 
mechanical  facts  with  which  Lillias  felt 
bound,  as  people  do,  to  delay  the  appearance 
of  the  vital  matters.  Then  Mrs.  Crombie' s 
voice  grew  more  distinct,  and  her  utterance 
more  coherent.  "  '  Of  course,'  "  she  read  on, 
"'I  could  not  honestly  say  that  I  was  sur 
prised  to  see  him.  I  might  as  well  confess, 
' '  right  here,"  as  the  public  speakers  say  in  this 
section,  that  I  should  have  been  a  little  dis 
appointed  if  I  had  not  found  him  waiting 
for  me,  not  exactly  at  the  station,  but  some 
where  on  the  municipal  premises.  His  be 
ing  here  opened  up  the  whole  subject  again, 
and  when  we  had  gone  over  it  very  thorough 
ly  I  could  not  see  where  the  situation  had 
changed  in  the  least,  and  he  was  forced  to 
acknowledge  himself  that  it  had  not.  The 
evening  was  ending — he  came  to  call  on  me 
at  the  president's  house,  where  they  had 
asked  me  to  stay  till  I  could  get  settled — 
with  our  having  decided  neither  of  us  ever 
220 


Miss   Bellard's    Inspiration 

to  marry,  but  both  to  remain  friends,  and 
see  each  other  when  we  liked,  without  any 
silly  consciousness,  when  he  remembered 
something.  He  said  he  had  forgotten  to 
mention  that  Mrs.  Mevison  was  staying  at 
his  hotel,  and  when  I  whooped  at  him,  he 
said,  Yes,  he  believed  she  had  taken  up  her 
residence  there  in  order  to  get  a  divorce. 
He  had  not  spoken  with  her,  but  the  young 
lawyer  here  who  first  told  him  about  my 
lectures  and  brought  him  to  hear  me,  has 
charge  of  her  case,  and  he  told  Edmund. 

"  *  Somehow,  that  seemed  to  throw  a  new 
light  on  the  whole  affair.  I  can't  say  just 
how  it  did,  but  it  did.  I  sank  down  into  one 
chair,  and  Edmund,  who  is  only  too  glad  to 
sink  into  chairs,  so  as  to  get  rid  of  some  of 
his  ridiculous  length,  I  suppose,  sank  into  an 
other.  I  instantly  commanded  him  to  tell 
me  all  about  it,  but  it  seems  that  he  had  told 
me  at  least  all  he  knew,  except  the  grounds 
for  her  divorce  which  her  lawyer  gave  him. 

221 


Miss  Bellard's   Inspiration 

"  She  alleges  extreme  cruelty  and  gross  neg 
lect  of  duty,"  Edmund  said,  and  then  we 
looked  at  each  other,  and  though  he  has  not 
the  American  sense  of  humor  that  we  brag 
so  about,  even  he  could  see  the  fun  of  this, 
and  we  burst  out  laughing  in  each  other's 
faces.  When  I  could  get  my  breath,  I  said, 
"So  they  are  going  to  separate,  after  all." 
"  Yes,"  he  said,  and  then  before  I  knew  it  he 
was  offering  an  argument  that  cleared  me  up 
to  myself  in  the  most  wonderful  way.  I 
must  try  to  give  it  to  you  in  his  own  words, 
as  nearly  as  I  can,  for  I  think  it  is  very 
subtle,  and  does  him  great  credit.  He  said, 
11  Now  you  see,  don't  you,  that  this  re 
moves  the  only  obstacle,  the  only  real  ob 
stacle,  in  your  mind?"  I  asked  him  if  he 
meant  that  strange  sort  of  feeling  I  had  that 
we  should  be  like  them,  if  we  married,  and 
that  there  was  not  room  in  the  world  for  two 
such  quarrelsome  couples,  and  he  said  that  was 
just  what  he  meant.  "  If  they  are  separated 
222 


Miss  Bellard's    Inspiration 

for  good  and  all,"  he  said,  "don't  you  see  that 
it  gives  us  our  chance?  There  is  really  no 
occasion  for  our  breaking  now,  is  there?" 

'"Of  course,  there  was  a  great  deal  more, 
and  it  was  midnight  before  we  had  talked  it 
all  out;  but  midnight  is  nothing  here,  when 
a  young  man  is  calling.  The  point  was  a 
very  fine  one,  and  I  kept  losing  it;  but  he 
never  did ;  he  has  so  much  intellectual  tenac 
ity  ;  and  he  held  me  to  it,  so  that  when  he  did 
go  away,  I  promised  him  that  I  would  think 
about  it.  I  did  think  about  it,  and  before 
morning  I  had  a  perfect  inspiration.  My 
inspiration  was  that  where  I  was  so  helpless 
to  reason  it  out  for  myself,  I  ought  to  leave 
it  altogether  to  him,  and  that  is  why  we 
are  going  to  be  married  in  the  spring.  We 
have  agreed  to  wait  till  the  spring  term 
of  the  court  is  over,  and  see  whether  Mrs. 
Mevison  gets  her  divorce  or  not.  I  know 
she  will,  but  I  am  still  a  little  morbid  about 
it,  and  Edmund  waits  to  gratify  me.  I 
223 


Miss  Bellard's  Inspiration 

shall  enjoy  giving  my  lectures  during  the 
winter,  and  he  is  going  to  look  after  his 
ranch,  and  see  if  he  can  get  it  into  shape 
again,  so  that  we  can  go  out  and  live  there/  ' 

There  was  more  like  this  in  the  letter,  but 
it  was  here  that  Mrs.  Crombie  broke  off  her 
reading  to  ask,  "  Did  you  ever  hear  of  any 
thing  so  absurd?" 

" Absurd?  No!"  Crombie  answered  with 
robust  decision.  "  I  have  had  my  moments 
of  suspecting  that  Lillias  was  a  fool,  but  this 
settles  it.  She  has  shown  horse-sense." 

"  How  can  you  be  so  coarse?"  his  wife  mur 
mured,  fondly,  with  tears  of  entire  satisfac 
tion  in  her  eyes.  "  She  can  make  him  go  to 
England  and  live  now,  if  she  wants  to.  He 
will  do  anything  for  her.  But  you  can  see  it 
wasn't  a  reason  he  gave  her." 

"  Well,  I  suppose  she  didn't  want  a  reason, 
if  she  had  an  inspiration." 

THE    END 


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